


Breathe Lightly

by nhixxie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-19
Updated: 2014-11-19
Packaged: 2018-02-26 06:01:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2640755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nhixxie/pseuds/nhixxie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"To my first love, and my last, Dean Winchester. These are the things I want to tell you: the human body is 60% water. The number of neurons in one person is the rough equivalent of the number of stars in a small galaxy. There is 0.2 milligrams of gold in your blood. The heart is an elaborate engine. I love you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

Let it be known that Castiel Novak

 

 

 

 

 

“To see life more than the sum of different parts.”

Anna looks up from her coffee. “Hm?”

“I think it sounds just about right.” Dean says, tapping his finger against his lips, “He’s all about that kind of shit.”

 Anna smiles in remembrance. “Yeah. He does that.”

 The sunlight streaming from the window touches her hair, making it even more vibrantly red. Dean’s fingers tap against each other, and he finds himself fidgeting, like tomorrow is a few seconds away. He lets himself ask the question he keeps with him from the moment he wakes up, to the point his body brings himself back to sleep.

 “You think people will come see it?”

 His voice hangs in the air like a suspension failing to settle.

 She looks at him sincerely, reassuringly. It was blinding.

 “Of course.”

 

_Chapter 1_

 

 

 

 

[ ** _logo animation of NYU Langone Medical Center_** ]

[ ** _voice over_** ] _As one of the most highly ranked hospitals locally, nationally, and internationally, NYU Langone Medical Center’s mission and vision is clear: to holistically and exceptionally approach patient care while integrating this central aspect with research and education._ [ **_montage of video clips_** ] _The Department of Emergency Medicine operates under this same umbrella of high standards, as carried on and improved from the lineage provided by Bellevue Hospital Center, established in 1736._

[ ** _head shot of a man_** ] [ ** _Dean Winchester, MD (Junior Resident) in the corner of the screen_** ] _“It’s certainly a place of work that is ideal in many regards. The international acclaim is one thing, but when you’re on the floor working with wonderful people, knowing full well you’re always working with standards that ensure optimal patient care, you feel secure. I truly cannot wait until I can call this place my place of employment. I’m happy being a part of this team, and I’m happy everytime I walk through those doors._

 

 

 

 

Dean Winchester walks through the doors.

“Fuck.”

A woman in scrubs laughs.

Dean lets the door swing close behind him. “Has anybody made stupid decisions today?"

The nurse motions elegantly towards the row of closed curtains.

Dean groans and moans. "Fuuuck."

“Good evening to you too, you ray of sunshine.” The nurse pinches his cheek fondly.

 “Please tell me the worst thing we have to deal with today is an old lady with shingles.”

 “Sorry, sweetie.” She doesn’t look even the slightest bit sorry at all.

 “Really? At eleven in the evening? People do things at eleven in the evening?” Dean tiredly says as he slips on a white lab gown over his scrubs.

 “‘Course they do.” she says, “Just because you’ve got no social life doesn’t mean other people don’t.”

 “Ha ha,” Dean laughs dryly, evading the teasing elbow the nurse attempts to plant into his side. “Make it sound easier than it is, at least?”

 “I’ll try.” she says, raising her brows at him, before flipping pages of her clipboard. “Broken right collarbone post-skateboarding accident on bed two, man with head injury and mild laceration due to stepping and sliding on paint, that’s bed four--and, a hyperthermic child with a severely stressed out mother on bed six, four more patients still on triage, and chief res is gonna be late.”

Dean does a series of clicks on the computer, pulling out electronic charts. “Chief res has a name.”

“Cain Adamson?” the nurse asks, “Doctor Cain? I’ll stick with the ambiguous, less threatening nickname, thank you.”

“Don’t have to be all ‘he-who-must-not-be-named’ on him.”

She rolls her eyes. “Fucking nerd.”

Dean fights the urge to grin.

 

 

 

 

 

“Bed two should be okay for now.” ”Dean says as he takes a big sip of coffee, “He’s on an additional 10 mg IV Morphine until his gen surgeon arrives. Check him every four hours or so, yeah?”

“Same flow rate?”

“Yup.” Dean flips through a page. “How big is the laceration on bed four?”

“Two, three inches.”

“Is he stable?”

“Conscious, on local anesthesia--you know, if you’re double triaging these three, I suggest you start with sir slip and slide over here--”

How long do we have to wait over here, an impatient yell rings from the other end of the hall, the curtains around the last bed shuffling and swaying, This is America!

Dean stares, already defeated. "A lovely, polite Canadian lady with shingles. Is that too much to ask?" He slings his stethoscope around his neck. “Jody, anything I need to know about bed six?”

Jody Mills hands Dean the patient chart.

“She’s a thrower.”

Dean tries not to be worried. “Got great reflexes.” He takes the largest sip of coffee he could accommodate in his mouth and readies himself.

“She was a pitcher back in high school!” Jody calls.

Dean raises a brow. “How the hell do you know?”

She gives him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.

“She’s my sister.”

 

 

Dean pulls back the curtain and steps out of it with a wince.

Jody places a hand over her mouth as she tries to squash down an obnoxious laugh.

"Not a damn word, Mills."

Jody wheezes instead.

 

 

“2.5 grams of Children’s Tylenol for Sandy?” Jody reads off the medication order form as Dean shuffles through a short stack of folders for the patient in bed four.

“Just until her blood tests come back.”

Jody snickers. “And for her mom?”

Dean pulls out the chart he needs. “A drink, maybe.”

He’s flipping through the folder, running his capped pen through lines and lines of assessment data when he hears a clicking sound, then somebody speaking with a clear, but gentle voice.

 

 

_**** _

_Breathe._

_You, who takes oxygen from the universe,_

_And gives back carbon dioxide in return._

 

 

There is another click, the talking stops, replaced by thoughtful mutterings, words being tried against each other as he recites them under his breath over and over again, and then another click.

 

 

_You, who basks in sunshine at seven in the morning,_

_and solidifies your bones with it._

 

 

Dean clings onto the voice, blinking, placing his capped pen back onto the chart he has in his hands and quickly searches for a name.

 

 

_You, whose parts are organs, and tissues, and cells, and elements, and molecules, and **stars**._

 

 

He walks towards the closed bed in steps that feel hurried, reaches out for the hem of the curtains--and he questions himself.

 

 

_One day, you will return the dust you’ve borrowed from this old, old universe._

 

 

Dean pulls it open.

 

 

_But until then,_

_Breathe._

 

 

“Cas.” he says— _breathes_ —and the man, Castiel Novak, looks up.

There is another click, and it is from a recorder he has in his hands, pressed into pause.

Castiel Novak looks at him, equally startled.

“Dean.”

 

 

_You are a piece of this moving everything._

_And everything is not everything without you._

 

 

Dean unravels.

 

 

_My life's book falls into my hands_

_And I peeled back the pages, every single one._

_I realized warmly that everything is you,_

_Encased in every paragraph, scribbled onto the margins._

_My life outside the onset of you,_

_Is just the foreword and the credits--_

_To my dear love,_

_From me to you._

\- n.t

Art by [Christine ](http://www.christineclemmensen.dk/Grafisk_Design_og_Illustration/Velkommen.html) [ Clemmensen ](http://www.christineclemmensen.dk/Grafisk_Design_og_Illustration/Velkommen.html)

 

 

 

“Doctor, you have to.”

“No.”

“But he’s disturbing everybody, please—”

“That ain’t my problem.”

“He won’t stop hitting the call bell—”

“I’m an emerg doctor I’m not in charge of that department and if you fucking tell me _one more time_ —”

“Winchester,” Dean cringes, shoulder visibly jumping. He looks over his shoulder and sees his chief resident looming above him.

“Yeah, doc?”

“Appease your patient-friend, please.” he rumbles, turning to rummage through the supply shelves overhead, “I can hear him all the way from the cafeteria.”

Dean breathes out. “Sir. I will do all the digital disimpaction you want me to do.”

“Tempting. But I got other people for that.” He actually snickers, and with a wave of the hand he turns away. “I will not hear anything from that wing when I have my afternoon coffee break, do you understand?”

Dean bites off the sass that sits at the tip of his tongue. When he turns away with a dispirited nod, the student nurse before him looks smug. He rolls his eyes and walks off with the student in tow.

“He’s been asking for you the entire day, you know.”

“Who are you anyways?” Dean grumbles, thumbing the name tag pinned onto the student’s scrubs, “Kevin?”

“Tran. Kevin Tran.” he says quickly, “I’m the student nurse assigned to Mister Novak. He’s been very vocal about having a word with you, chaotically vocal, if you ask me, but nobody seems to do anything.”

Dean looks forward, hands in his pockets. “He’s the hospital chairman’s brother. If he wanted a medium rare in his hospital prepared meal, he’d have ways.”

Kevin Tran pales, eyes popping wide. “Brother?”

Dean absentmindedly nods, grabbing a brochure from the bulletin board as they pass.

“Oh my god. I passive-aggressively threatened Michael Novak’s brother with an enema. Holy shit. I threatened him—”

Dean raises both eyebrows in amusement.

“He was so noisy!” Kevin almost wails, hands clawing at his face, “And I was getting frustrated, I have a pharmacology midterm tomorrow and I’m—shit, I am so dead, I—”

Dean laughs, because damn, he still remembers the first pharmacology test he ever took.

“He’s the chairman’s brother. Doesn’t mean he’s like him.” he points out, giving Kevin a nudge forward, “Are we going or not?”

The student nods frantically as they walk on again, and when they board the elevators, Dean slightly looks over his shoulder.

“An enema, though?”

Kevin looks back at Dean with conviction. “It’s a skill I’ve truly mastered.

 

 

 

 

 

Kevin Tran the student nurse deposits Dean by the door of room 213, but when he walks away to report back to his instructor, Dean does a one-eighty and locks himself inside the supply room.

 _Shit_ , he tells himself, eyes pressed close, _Shit, I am not fucking ready for this,_

_The fuck is this shit._

_I am gonna fuck this up so bad._

It was the worst prep speech to have ever been conceived, but Dean drags himself to step out of the room just as quickly as he stepped in.

When he wills himself back, Dean finds Castiel seated on his bed, his own chart in hand. He flips through it with a precision that obviously a civilian would not have, like he knows what he wants to see and understands medical jargon like it’s been ingrained in him. And he does know, and he does understand.

Dean feels an odd sort of familiarity in his chest, just as he notices the recorder sitting on the surface of Cas' bedside table.

“Still know how that works?” he asks, almost croakily, but he recovers. Castiel looks up at him, a smile steady in its spread upon his lips.

“Barely.” he answers, laughing a little, “Doctors still write unbearably though. I hope your handwriting’s better.”

There’s a tease in those words that Dean can’t help but smile at.

“Barely.” Silence hangs in the air for a moment before Dean decides to ax it down. “You were asking for me?"

Castiel’s eyes liven in remembrance, and he nods. “Yeah, I wanted to talk.”

Dean reaches out for his stethoscope as he walks towards the bedside. “You feeling something out of the ordinary? If you could just hand me your chart--”

“Dean.” Cas says softly, looking at him, you know what I mean, and Dean wants to flee immediately.

“Cas.” Dean says, and he tries so hard to sound like this is normal by all means, “I’m here as your doctor. Nothing more.”

Castiel seems like he wants to say something else, but he closes his mouth. “No, of course. I understand.” He stands up and gathers his bag from the cabinet. “I’m off in a few, they just discharged me.

It takes Dean a few seconds before he can nod. He picks up the recorder and extends it towards Cas, who only smiles at him with appreciation.

“Take care of yourself.”

Dean walks out fifteen minutes after Cas walks out—walks out so fast he almost stumbles halfway through, so he runs instead, like everything’s on fire and he needs a way out. Escape presents itself as an empty briefing room, and he sits there, waiting for his heart to beat its normal pace.

He tries not to remember how Castiel’s

 

 

 

_ Chapter 2 _

 

 

 

 

 

“What the fuck do you mean he's an art major?”

_Just trust me._

"That’s a fucking problem in its own.”

_Fuck you, Winchester._

“Jo, this is life and death, I can't gamble on this—"

_Calm down._

“Harvelle—”

_I said calm down you little shit, sheesh._

There's a momentary pause.

Dean huffs. "We’re meeting up at an actual junkyard. He's a serial killer, probably.”

_You did say ‘kill me now’._

“So did seventy percent of our class when Sharma announced our midterm date.”

_God, you’re so yappy._

Dean makes a face. “Fuck you.”

“Maybe not today.”

Something jumps at Dean’s throat as he croaks, “Hey.” He punches the 'end call' button with Jo cackling on the other line.

He doesn’t look bad—he really doesn’t, Dean thinks, as he watches Castiel Novak of Student Academic Services peel off his university jacket and sling it over his shoulder. Doesn’t look deranged, no sharp metals at hand. His hair looks a little bit tousled, but not enough to indicate he’s been running away from the police for a number of days. His eyes are also really blue (and Dean notices this in an attempt to check for blood shot eyes, truly).

“Dean, right?” he asks.

“Yeah,”

“It’s nice to meet you.” he offers a hand, which Dean takes with a ‘you too’, and the mental note of how Castiel Novak has really cold fingers. ( _Cryogenic chamber of some sort to stow away bodies?_ )

“Is this your usual study area?” Dean says jokingly, trying to move on from his initial suspicion. The little chuckle Castiel gives him helps a lot.

“I usually go for coffee shops.” he says kindly, as he motions for them to walk forward, “Jo says you’re good with cars.”

“I’m great with cars.” Dean points out.

Castiel smiles. “Then why are you asking me for anatomy help?"

Dean blinks. "Because cars aren't people."

Castiel has that knowing look most smart people have. "One and the same."

_Oh my god. He's crazy._

“What do you find difficult about it?” Castiel asks.

“Just—everything.” he says, trying for nonchalance when the ultimate goal is to push down embarrassment, “There’s so many things to know, every single thing is connected to a million others, and all those fucking—” Dean cringes, apologetic, “Sorry—all those words, it’s like learning a new language.”

He combs through his hair in worry. “I'm a test away from flunking.”

Castiel smiles, does so brilliantly, and gives him a pat on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, you fucking have me.”

Dean can’t help but chuckle.

“Okay.” Castiel says as they settle to a full stop, “This only works if you trust me.”

“You a serial killer?” Dean asks.

Castiel laughs. “No.”

Dean nods once. “Okay, tell me what to do.”

Castiel points a finger towards an old, dusty Chevy Impala parked right next to the small, rundown shack that serves as the yard’s informal office space.

“Fix this."

 

 

 

 

 

“So what’s wrong with it?

“What’s not wrong with it?” Dean scoffs slightly, “The engine’s busted, the body’s all beaten up, there’s rust all over, and a head light’s missing. And these tires.”

Cas squints. “Or the lack of them.”

“No shit.” Dean says, wiping his brow as he takes the keys from Cas’ hands and opens the driver’s side door. “All things considered—A chevy impala. One hell of a ride. Give it a lot of care and it should be awesome.” He slides the keys into the ignition and turns, generating a small sputter before the sound roars to life, a cloud of exhaust fumes wafting into the air.

Cas whistles a failing tune. “Engine first, then.”

“Anyway,” Dean starts as he props the hood up with a clunk, “How’s this going to help me learn my stuff? Or are you just looking for free car repairs?”

Cas looks at Dean knowingly. “Tell me how an engine works.”

Dean looks back, perplexed, and then sighs in defeat. “Cars run on burned air and fuel, and that’s what the engines do. In an ideal world at least seventy percent of this should be functional for it to be a good day in the shop..”

“What’s wrong with this one, then?”

Dean takes a wrench and starts unscrewing bolts from the gasket cover. “There was air pressure on the radiator when I tried to remove the cap, and the overflow tank’s sputtering, fumes.. Pretty sure it’s a blown gasket, but I need to get this cover off to check—here, start unscrewing here, here, and here.” Dean says, handing Cas another wrench.

They finally jiggle the cover off, and Cas runs a gloved finger along the engine’s camshaft. “They all look like tiny pumps.”

“It’s because they are.” Dean answers as he checks the cover’s interior rubber lining, “Engines have cylinders where the pistons are, and the pistons basically allow air and fuel in through one valve, and pushes it out as combustion into another.”

“You just described pulmonary-systemic circulation, did you know that?” Cas asks pointedly, smiling wide.

“When the spark plugs ignite to get the engine going, think of the pacemaker of the heart. It does the same thing in principle. The pacemaker sends electrical signals through the heart muscles so it can contract, just like how spark plugs mechanizes the engine's functions.”

Cas reaches out for a screw driver and uses the tip to point at a part in the engine. “The cylinders are the chambers of the heart. Blood is channeled into the atria and it passes through valves to get to the ventricles. Sound familiar?”

“Uh,” Dean shifts uncomfortably, “Just like how air and fuel passes through intake valves. Right?” he asks hopefully, like he’s scared of making another mistake. Cas smiles encouragingly.

“Then, the ventricles, they’re your pistons—they accommodate blood by allowing more space until they have their fill and they push the blood through another set of valves, called semilunar valves, so the blood can reach the rest of the body.”

“Or, so the fuel can reach the rest of the car,” Dean slowly adds. He chews on his lower lip. “So—the tailpipe.”

Cas prods on. “The tailpipe.”

“The tailpipe blowing out combustion gas,” Dean says carefully, “Is the same as the lungs exhaling carbon dioxide.”

Cas is grinning. “You know engines. The heart is an elaborate engine.” He nudges Dean expectantly. "Well?"

Dean rolls his eyes, but smiles.

“Yeah, yeah.”

 

 

 

“Superior and inferior venae cavae, right atria, tricuspid valve, right ventricle, pulm—” Dean unhinges the wrench from a bolt and stops unscrewing, looking at Cas for direction. “Pulmonary?”

“You got it, go on,” he hums from his recliner, hand moving across the sketchbook he has in his hands. There’s a spot of charcoal on his face, just like there’s a spot of motor oil across Dean’s forehead.

Dean turns back to the engine, head ducking beneath the hood. “Pulmonary semi-lunar valve, pulmonary trunk, pulmonary arteries, lungs,”

“What happens in the lungs?”

“Shit happens.” Dean says.

Cas attempts to maintain a straight face. “Really.”

Dean nods. “Yeah, man, shit just goes down in that place.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, and you know what I heard?” Dean even leans in, “I heard there’s like—exchanges going on there. Carbon dioxide for oxygen. Fucking drug dealers, man.”

Cas laughs way harder than he anticipated he would, and Dean grins so hard his lips start to hurt.

 

 

 

 

 

When Dean turns up for their third session, Cas isn’t there.

He waits until he can’t wait anymore; goes home with frustration, annoyance, and worry nestled in his chest.

It’s only at three in the morning the next day that Dean receives a text message.

 

_I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to go, I had a family emergency_

 

Dean blinks away the remnants of an unsettling dream and texts back.

 

_make up for it then_

_wed 2pm cinema cafe_

 

 

 

 

 

“We clean up pretty damn good.” Dean says as Cas steps into the cafe doors, already smiling.

“Yes we do.” Cas answers, smiling, settling into a plush couch, “Nice to see you not so greasy.”

Dean tips an imaginary hat from where he's sitting. “Nice to see you not so dusty.”

“So. This is ‘making up for it’?” Cas asks, looking around, “I should miss more sessions with you.”

Dean raises a brow as he takes two menus from their server. “You’ve never been?”

“I’ve never been anywhere.” Cas laughs softly, opening the menu in front of him, “I was a very sheltered child. Even my brothers and sisters won’t let me out of the house unless I’ve got my medical bracelet on.”

Dean doesn’t hide his mild surprise. “Medical bracelet?”

Cas gathers his sleeve and lets a metal band along his wrist peek out, a red caduceus symbol in the center, matte against the glimmer of silver.

“What for?” Dean asks, but Cas just smiles, covering the bracelet with one hand.

“Might be too much for a first date.”

Dean cringes, embarrassed. He opens one eye sheepishly. “Was I that obvious?”

Cas grins. “Painfully so.”

“I still want to see, though.” Dean prods, teasingly pulling on Cas’ fingers, all of which are still characteristically cold, “Aren’t health statuses first date information? Do I want to date a dude who has chronic diarrhea? Important questions.”

Cas bursts out laughing, making a few heads turn.

Dean covers his eyes with a hand. “You’re embarrassing me, Cas.”

“Okay, how about this.” Cas finally says, wiping away a tear, “Score a B+ or higher on your midterm, and I’ll let you see.”

“Easy, easy deal.” Dean says, waving a hand.

 

 

 

 

 

“Have you ever birthed a baby? Let me elaborate: has your body ever contained an actual baby at any point whatsoever?”

Cas presses his lips together, refusing to be the weaker link. “I watched somebody birth a baby. Do I get points?”

Dean mulls over the thought. “Half a point.”

“I’ll take it. My turn.” Cas licks his lips out of habit, “You can’t lie. You have to tell the truth.”

Dean raises both hands in surrender. “If this was about the dead body in my trunk..”

“Worse.” Cas says.

“Worse than cannibalism?”

“Have you ever modeled?”

The color drains from Dean's face and he closes his eyes in shame. “Jo told you?”

Cas snickers.

“We were playing pool, and I lost a bet.” Dean says, smothering his face with both hands, “Christ, I am gonna kill her for this.”

“Don’t, she’s nice.” Cas answers, “And she has the last existing copy of that magazine.” he adds, to which Dean groans like a wounded dog.

“Okay, moving on,” Dean says, waving his hands urgently, “Have you ever peed in a swimming pool?”

Cas shakes his head no.

“You’re lying.” Dean says disbelievingly.

“I promise.” Cas answers, “Why, have you?”

“Hell yeah.” Dean proudly says, and Cas makes a disgusted face.

“That’s gross and uncivilized.”

“Cas,” Dean starts, adjusting himself on his seat, hands in front of him in gesticulation, “It’s human nature to be too lazy to run all the way across to a ceramic bowl just to take a piss, when you’re standing in one already. Everybody at one point in their young or adult life has peed in a swimming pool.”

“You’re telling me a fully functional adult would pee in a swimming pool.”

Dean raises a finger, saying pointedly, “Piss-drunk frat brothers.”

Cas chews on his lip. “You get a point for that.”

Dean laughs, shaking his head. “Man, you weren’t joking on the sheltered thing.”

“I just don’t understand how you can start peeing in a pool full of people.” Cas says, “How do you even psychologically and emotionally set yourself up for that?”

Dean shrugs. “You just go. Release your sphincters and go.”

Cas snickers. “Wow.”

Dean rubs his hands together. “Okay, here’s the big question right here.”

“It’s my turn.”

“Shh. This is the deciding factor.” Dean continues.

Cas takes a leisurely sip of water.

“What is your baby prostitute name?”

By the time their food arrives, Cas is hiding behind his hands, face red, shoulders shaking.

 

 

 

 

 

“Okay, I need to know one thing.” Cas asks as they step out of the cafe and into the streets, “You’re a good mechanic.”

“Great mechanic.” Dean corrects.

“Great mechanic.” Cas agrees, “You don’t just know a car, you problem solve it and you fix it. In the field of medicine, that’s the equivalent of being a general surgeon.”

Dean chuckles. “I know where this is going.”

“Is it job insecurity?” Cas asks, peering into Dean’s eyes, “Because it isn’t. Ever. Insecure, I mean.”

Dean keeps his silence, fingers rubbing against his chin like discomfort has settled like baggage against his shoulders.

Cas presses his lips together, apologetic. “Too much for a first date?”

“No, it’s alright.” Dean says, waving off Cas’ caution, though the hard set in his jaw remains strong. “My mom died when I was a kid.”

“I’m sorry.” Cas softly says, which makes a corner of Dean’s lips quirk in a half smile.

“Yeah. Me too.” he says, “I couldn’t take care of her since I was too young to know what to do. She was always in the hospital. Lost her to a disease that I didn’t even understand.”

“One day she called me over, and she’s in pain.” Dean continues as they walk on. A kid on a skateboard speeds past them noisily and Dean’s eyes follow his movements for a few moments before again facing forward.

“I was seven, and I was scared shitless. She wouldn’t hit the call bell, and I couldn’t reach it to save my life, so I asked her what I could do. She told me to sing ‘Hey Jude’ for her. She took me in her arms and I just sang until she fell asleep.”

“When you’re seven years old, you never think things go wrong.” he says, lifting his shoulders and slumping them down again, “That’s the thing about being a kid, right? You’re not supposed to be sad. Your capacity is a small cup and life should know better not to cause a shitty spill. But it does. It spills all over and you’re wet and cold and crying and mad.”

Cas presses his lips together.

Dean says with a voice lulled of its emotion, “So, at seven years old, I decided I’ll be a doctor. Maybe that way I can do more than sing songs to a dying person.”

Cas looks up at the sky, like there’s five hundred different things in the darkening canvas that he finds of interest. “Maybe a song is what she needed the most.”

Dean turns to Cas, pleasantly surprised, and he doesn’t think about this—but he looks at him like he’s found stars in the sky, and he realizes they were beautiful.

 

 

 

 

 

The first thing Jo hands Dean is a metal wrist band.

The second thing she gives him is a note.

 

_340 E 34th Street Plaza East_

 

When Dean looks at her with a question in his eyes, she raises a finger in warning.

 “You googled his address.”

 

 

 

Dean snaps the metal wristband closed.

He shifts it in his hands a few times, his eyes lost.

It almost makes sense that an art major knows so much about the human body.

 

 

 

 

 

When Dean shows up at Cas’ apartment door, he is greeted by surprised eyes.

“You couldn’t give this to me in person?” Dean asks, the sound of metal tinkling accompanying the tiredness in his voice.

Cas’ resistance crumbles; he moves aside, motioning for Dean to come in. He gestures towards the couch. “Take a seat.”

Dean feels himself sink into the cushions, just as he feels Cas’ weight dip into it right beside him. He looks around, taking in the bareness of the flat, minimalist at best. The only things of color Dean could see are the statuettes he has lined on the far wall, and the orange pill bottles on Cas’ coffee table, all standing in brightly-hued attention.

“You shouldn’t do this to yourself.” Cas says, “I’ve given you an out.”

Dean props an elbow onto his knee, chin settled on his hand. “I wasn’t looking for one.”

“Not now, you aren’t.” Cas answers so straightforwardly, fact of the matter is, and it takes Dean quite aback. “You’ll change your mind.”

Dean replies, “I’m a stubborn ass.”

Cas allows himself to chuckle, and then his resistance splinters. He shakes his head, lays it comfortingly against Dean’s shoulder. Dean shifts, letting Cas fit against his side, and he does so perfectly—like this open space underneath Dean’s arm is where he needs to be.

“I’ve got a blown gasket.” Cas murmurs.

“Don’t worry.” Dean says sincerely, “I’m great with engines.”

He fishes out the metal band from his pocket and flips it within his hands.

“Tell me all about it.” His thumb grazes the lettering at the back.

“It’s called Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome,” Cas says.

And Dean—Dean, with his warm hands against Cas’ cold ones—listens.

 

 

 

 

 

**How to Not Unwittingly Kill Your Boyfriend: A Guide**

 

                                                                 1)  You can’t smoke in my general area        _I don’t smoke that’s gross_

  
                                                                 2)  No drugs              _Well there goes my part time job of being a drug mule_

  
                                                                 3)  Can’t drink caffeinated drinks           _OH MY GOD I BROUGHT YOU TO A CAFE ON OUR FIRST_  
                                                                                                                                    _DATE I COULD HAVE KILLED YOU_

  
                                                                 5)  No extreme physical exhaustion    _Does that mean no sex (answer for science)_

  
                                                                 6)  Can’t do or have anything that may cause acid reflux     _Like heart burn??_

  
                                                                 7)  Don’t make me too happy   _I’ll try to turn down my charm_

  
                                                                 8)  And don’t make me too sad   _Never._

 

 

 

 

When Dean arrives to their seventh session, Cas is already peering down the engine, oil smudges of intense proportions streaking along his face.

“How are you doing, you piece of shit?” he says from afar.

“Not bad, dumb fuck.” Cas calls back.

“I got the new parts.” Dean raises the plastic bag in his hand. “Whatcha doin’?”

“I’m fixing the engine.” Cas answers, laughing, “I’m doing so bad, I think I broke something else.”

Dean comes over to look. “Nah, you’re good. Okay, you take the cover off.”

Cas obediently reaches out and picks the cover up, laying it on the ground.

“I have zip ties over here, and we’re gonna tie them around the chain and sprocket so they don’t get loose when we pop the gasket head off. Here, tie one over there.”

“Here?”

“A little to the left—yeah, that’s good.”

“Okay. What’s next?”

“Grab a wrench. We’re unscrewing all these bolts right here—whoa there wait a minute, there’s a specific order.”

“ _A specific order?_ ”

“That’s why we have a manual.”

After a long stretch of seemingly impossible turning and adjusting, Dean lifts the gasket head off with a great heave and plops it on their work table.

“There you are.” he cheers, picking the thin sheet of metal off the surface, squinting at the burnt holes on its body. “God, look at that. No wonder there’s a shit ton of coolant everywhere.”

Cas motions for a closer look, and Dean hands him the defective piece.

Cas looks at it, eyes flickering just the slightest. “Heart disease.” he says, humor in his voice.

(The heart is an elaborate engine.)

Dean smiles.

“Nothing we can’t fix.”

 

 

 

 

 

_The heart is an engine,_

_But the human body is not machinery,_

_And that is the mistake._

\- n.t.

Art by [Luis ](http://rational-works.tumblr.com/about) [ Aretuo ](http://rational-works.tumblr.com/about)

 

 

 

_ Chapter 3 _

 

 

 

 

 

 _There’s the entrance_ , Dean thinks, looking at the metal numbers tacked onto the door of apartment 303—and then he turns around and thinks again, _and there’s the exit._

Dean takes a moment to reevaluate which door he really wants to step through, mulling in his head the purpose of why he’s standing in front of his brother’s place, yet again.  

It’s been years, and all he knows about him is his address (Suite 303 5506 Velvet Round, Swift Current, New York) and the fact that he changes his welcome mat every month or so. Last week, it was a burgundy one with a simple ‘welcome’ right across it. Today (a fresh first of May) it’s a cheesy rose-colored one with two foot prints in the middle.

Dean steps on the footprints, testing whether his shoes would fit.

Before he could think any further he punches a finger against the doorbell.

The door opens and Sam’s face drains the way it does even when he was a kid, and he doesn’t hesitate to angrily ask, “What are you doing here?”

Dean tries hard not to cringe.

“Good to see you too.”

“You don’t get to be here.”

Dean blinks, forcing down the poison from his tongue. “There’s nothing wrong with—”

“It’s plenty wrong,” Sam fumes, frowning, “I went away for a reason.”

Dean looks around and sighs. “Can we not fight outside?”

There is nothing but suspicion in Sam’s eyes, but he steps aside, nonetheless. Dean steps in gingerly, looks around, and finds Sam in every inch of the walls and the entire spread of the floor—a home like it never was, a home unlike the one that they shared as little boys. He ignores the lack of photographs, and finally turns to his brother.

“How have you been doing?” he asks lamely.

Sam looks at him, already tired.  “Come on, don’t.”

“I’m fucking trying—” Dean desperately says, and then sharply turns away, eyes scrunched close in frustration. His fingers find their way through his hair where they run restlessly. He lets his head slump.

“I don’t know what you— _goddammit fuck you Jo!_ ” Dean half wails, half laughs, hiding his face behind his hands in embarrassment. In his head the apartment walls start to crumble down, the welcome mat melting through the floor. Everything is replaced by a bare stage.

Jo bursts out laughing, bits of her sandwich flying from her mouth.

“I’m sorry!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sam bites his lower lip  to stop it from shaking. “No, go on, we can still—”

Dean looks at Sam, aggravated. “Sammy I can hear her giggling in her corner—”

“I am so sorry!” she wheezes past mouthfuls of pastrami, “You’re just so good! Who the fuck knew, oh my god!”

Sam releases himself and breaks down into a laugh, burying his face into his copy of the script. “So close! So close, dammit!”

Dean throws the script towards Jo’s general direction, which she dodges expertly. “That’s enough rehearsal for today.”

“I shouldn’t even be doing this!” Dean says defensively, “Where the hell is your actual cast member?!”

Sam drags another chair across the theater stage and settles onto it. “I told you, incredibly late.” Sam gives him a pondering look. “You know, if he runs into traffic at the opening show...”

“Hell no.” Dean turns to Jo. “And you’re horrible.”

“Dean Winchester MD, Department of Emergency Medicine, real good with cars, Shakespearean sometimes.” Jo answers and lets the words speak for themselves.

“I help Sam rehearse.” Dean mutters defensively.

“I don’t understand why I need to have won a bet to get to be in these little practice runs you and Sam do.” Jo complains, fishing out the table napkins from underneath her sandwich container, “I’ve known you little shits since the dawn of day.”

“I met you in an elective class in university.”

“Bullshit, I’m the little sister you both always wanted.” Jo grins, and Sam actually nods in agreement.

“So you do this often?” she asks.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Dean grumbles, slightly flushed in the cheeks.

She turns to Sam. “He does this often?”

Sam grins. “Often enough to be that good.”

“I help him rehearse.” Dean argues, “He guilt trips me into it.”

“And you agree pretty damn fast for a person who’s supposed to be resistant.” Sam says.

Jo leans forward, grinning. “I’m not kidding about you being really good. I know Sam is. But man,” she chuckles, “If the doctor thing didn’t work out, this could’ve been a good second plan.”

Dean rolls his eyes, but there is laughter in them. “Well, the doctor thing worked out.”

“Thanks to certain people, right?” Jo prods, watching Dean sigh softly at the corner of her eye, “Just saying. Out of all the reasons why you should stop being an asshole about all this. You owe him.”

Sam looks back and forth between Dean and Jo, a question in his eyes. “What’s up?” A longer squint at his brother makes his mouth fall open. “Is it Cas?”

Dean rubs his fingers across his face, exhaling deeply. “He turned up at the ER. Took a bad step, he needed some stitches, that’s it.”

Jo hums knowingly under her breath. “I think you missed the part where he wanted to talk.”

Sam turns to Dean. “Did you?”

“‘Course not.” Dean says gruffly, leaning back onto his chair with a rough thump.

“You’re an idiot.” Sam says with a tone of finality, and Dean doesn’t protest.

One of the theater doors swings open, and a wheezy yell of ‘I’m sorry, I’m here!’ echoes from afar. Sam raises a hand and waves off the unnecessary apology and rises from his seat. He looks at Dean before heading towards the stage steps.

“Remember why you decided to work in emergency.”

 

 

 

 

“Why did you decide to work in emergency?”

Dean flicks both eyes up while shovelling a mound of mashed potato into his mouth. “Wha—?” he mumbles and gulps down food.

Kevin Tran, the student nurse, places his tray onto the table and sits across from him, leaning forward with vigorous intent.

“Why did you choose emergency medicine?"

Dean groans. “Who are you again?”

Kevin taps his name tag quickly. “So why emerg?”

“Because I’m an adrenalin junkie.” Dean answers gruffly.

“That’s it?”

Dean takes another spoonful of potato. “That’s it.”

Kevin takes a few seconds before taking his sandwich and peeling off the plastic wrap.

“Why are you even asking and why—” Dean throws his hands in the air incredulously as Kevin reaches across the table for his plastic knife and cuts the sandwich in half, “—Why are you sitting here at my table? Ever heard of hospital hierarchy?”

Kevin takes a bite. “You don’t really mean that.”

Dean tries hard not to agree. He really just wants a shining moment of silence during his break time before he has to jump back into calming down groaning patients with abdominal pain and assessing five x-ray films at a time.

“I ask because I want to plan out my professional career.” Kevin says, lighting up.

“Don’t you have like three years to go?” Dean asks curiously, brows furrowed.

“Two.” Kevin corrects, “And it’s not bad to think ahead.”

“Damn.” Dean says, quite impressed, “You’re quite the star student, aren’t you?” he looks around, “So where’s the rest of your nursing buddies?”

“Ward.” Kevin answers, reaching for a napkin, “My clinical instructor’s trying to find me another patient since the one assigned to me didn’t want a male nurse.”

“Happens.”

“Also she was racist.” Kevin adds.

Dean spreads his arms wide. “America.”

Kevin allows Dean a couple of gulps of coffee before he charges in with another question.

“So you’ve visited Mr. Novak recently?”

Dean stops, closes his eyes for a quick second. “What the hell, dude?” he asks, starting to sound angry, “How is this your business?”

Kevin raises both hands in the air in surrender, and the look of slight terror on his face reduces Dean’s compounding rage into a slight seethe. He fumes at his lunch silently, stabbing a piece of sausage.

“Sorry,” he sputters, “I just—I saw him again a while ago miraculously not asking for you anymore, and with him recently added on the transplant list—”

Dean looks up from his plate.

 

 

 

 

 

Jody looks up from the chart.

“Dean, the x-ray for bed fifteen—”

“Fuck,” Dean says emptily, hand rubbing over his jaw in agitation.

He repeats, “ _Fuck_ ,”

“Fuck,” he breathes out shakily, his hand now stationary over his jaw,

Jody dumps the chart onto the nearest table, “Dean,”

“Fuck,” his fingers curl over his mouth and form a tight, quivering grip; he breathes through his nose, eyes filling with angry tears—

“Dean,”

“FUCK,”

“FUCK!!” he yells a muffled roar, anger shaking his entire body in an unearthly magnitude.

He stumbles towards the nearest wall and plants a palm onto the concrete, leans onto it, trembling.

Jody touches her forehead onto Dean’s temple, both hands reassuring against his shoulders. His hand never leaves its silencing grip over his mouth.

 

 

 

 

 

A day after, Dean steps up to the door and looks down onto the welcome mat, a cheesy, rosy-colored one with two foot prints in the middle. He steps onto it, tries if his feet fit, and rings the doorbell

It does, just like it did the last time ten times he stood at this very hall.

Cas opens the door.

 

 

 

 

 

_Emergency Room Patient Admission Form Fig. 1_

 

 

 

 

 

Pulmonary edema is the accumulation of fluid within the alveolar sacs of one's lungs.

The lungs, being the primary site of gas exchange in the body, is not only rendered useless at the presence of fluids within its structure, but is also left to sustain injuries. Lung tissue is anatomically thin to allow passage of oxygen and carbon dioxide in and out of the body, and so, they are also anatomically fragile. Pulmonary edema could be caused by a multitude of things. John Doe's edema, for example, is caused by severe hypertension. He boasts of a constant diet of fast food and a genetic predisposition to heart disease.

But that doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, not anymore.

 

 

 

“Sit down.” Dean orders firmly and lets himself into Cas' apartment, tugging his stethoscope from his bag.

When Dean looks back at him, Cas looks at him half curious, half appalled.

In his hands is the recorder yet again, before he slips it into his pocket.

“Hello.” he says.

Dean struggles. “Sit.”

 

 

 

The main point is, John Doe is drowning within his own body.

 

 

 

Dean almost cannot breathe.

 

 

 

And it's the most ruthless of all pain.

 

 

 

 

 

_Emergency Room Patient Admission Form Fig. 2_

 

 

 

 

 

To not drown within your own body is ironic.

 

 

 

“Why isn’t this on your chart?” Dean asks silently as he listens to Cas' heart sounds like it's second nature.

He unravels the sphygmomanometer cuff and wraps it along Cas’ arm.

“The transplant list thing?”

“What else could it be?” Dean mutters as he watches the gauge tick down.

“Personal preference.” Cas answers, head slumping onto the back rest.

 

 

 

The human body is 60% water, yet in a miraculous orchestration of evolution or an omnipotent figure, it keeps itself where it’s supposed to be. Separations where separations are needed. Pathways where the absence of which is synonymous to life and death. Even earth itself cannot contain its bodies of water from spilling past its shores. We, as humans, have mechanisms of survival our planet doesn't even have.

 

 

 

“And how the hell does a student nurse know this information and—” ( _I don’t_ ) “—everybody else don’t?”

Cas looks at Dean out of the periphery of his eyes and repeats,

“Personal preference.”

 

 

 

The wonders of the human body, to have been created like every single constituent have been intricately thought over—bones strategically placed against each other to withstand the weight of an entire person and not shatter. Neurons forming multiple pathways as we age to ensure faster encoding of information. Skin layers thick enough to resist penetration of foreign bodies, but also lung tissue thin enough to allow exchange of gases.

 

 

 

“Why’d you want to talk?” Dean asks quietly.

Cas’s fingers find their way against each other, twisting and gripping.

“It was a split-second decision, not a long term plan. I saw you, and I just felt I should explain.”

 

 

 

But the human body is functional, not perfect.

You do something horrible to your anatomy. (You drink in excess, you smoke reams per half a month, you traumatize yourself.)

 

 

 

He mutters, “Fuck you, Cas.”

 Dean doesn't feel anything pass through his lungs anymore.

“You disappeared.” _I loved you so much, and you—_

 

 

Or maybe your anatomy does something horrible to you. (Your heart refuses to form that one valve, your lungs won’t produce enough surfactant, your kidneys think it’s funny to scar in ten different places.)

“Dean, I was dying.”

“And now?” Dean challenges, and it’s hurtful and mean and disgusting but he’s just _so hurt_ —

Cas sits up suddenly, like all the apology he has ever kept within himself is turning into the rigidity of self preservation.

“You know why I left?” he says quietly,

“It’s because you wanted me to live so badly.”

 

 

The human body is functional, not perfect.

Because if it is, John Doe wouldn't have pulmonary edema.

Dean Winchester wouldn't have a life long scar at the palm of his hands.

And Castiel Novak wouldn't have to die.

 

 

 

 

 

_Emergency Room Patient Admission Form Fig. 3_

 

 

 

 

 

“You wanted me to live so badly.”

Dean only looks at Cas, lost.

“Dean,” Cas says, “I’m living with half a heart. I go to sleep with pills in my mouth, and I wake up in the morning to the taste of it. The second most frequent activity I do within a month is my routine EKG. I wish I could ride a roller coaster without fearing my heart would give out. I'm an artist because I have no physical capacity to be anything else.”

He holds his fingers into a fist. “Always, I’m cold.”

He lets them unravel again. “Sometimes, I can’t even breathe.”

Cas looks at him in the eye. “Dean, I was going to die. I am going to die. And you can’t fix me, do you understand? Doesn't matter whether you’re a good mechanic, or a good doctor. The sooner you accept that, the better it is.”

There is nothing for a second or so, until a singular visible breath escapes Dean's lips.

“Give me an out.” He says, his throat tight, “Give me one now.”

“I can't watch you die this time.”

Five hundred decibels of silence pound into their ears.

“Okay.” Cas says, clean and simple.

Dean walks away.

 

 

 

 

 

_ Chapter 4 _

 

 

 

 

 

“I wouldn't want it.”

Dean gulps down his drink. “What?”

“For you to see me die.” Sam shrugs, but treads on lightly, “I wouldn't want it.”

“Nice to know.”

“You're my brother, and I love you, and I don't want to watch you hurting.”

“God fucking dammit, Sam.” Dean glares, and Sam rolls his eyes at the immaturity.

“Okay, shut up.” he retorts, “You look like you've botched five surgeries in one night. You look awful, you act awful, you feel awful.”

Dean closes his eyes for a few seconds and seethes. “I didn't tell you what happened so we can hold hands and sing Kumbaya, okay?” he says gruffly, “I told you because I just needed to, now be a fucking decent brother and pretend you never heard anything.”

“Remember why—”

“Don't you fucking start with me.”

Sam looks at him, perplexed. “Jesus.”

“Eat your damn salad.”

Sam stabs a fork through his greens as Dean takes a messy bite out of his burger, and he looks at him like he's witnessed somebody doing something barbaric. “You're a doctor, you should know what that does to your heart.”

Dean waves him away.

“One more thing.” Sam says, and Dean tries not to audibly groan.

“If I was dying the way Cas was dying—I sure as hell wouldn't owe anybody anything.” he says steadily, waving his fork slightly, “Even if it was you.”

Sam gives Dean a small, knowing look. “My only debt is to myself.”

“And if it means being without the person I greatly love, then so be it.”

 

 

 

 

 

Photographed by: [ Horst Kiechle ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/archisculpture/15064115451/)

Edit by: [ likeafieldmouse ](http://likeafieldmouse.com/post/27362531437/horst-kiechle-archisculpture-paper-torso-2012)

 

 

 

 

 

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Bobby Singer slowly grins from his little make shift office, “Look who finally came back to this neck of the woods.”

Dean laughs under his breath and opens his arms even before he can say something back, and the tight embrace becomes the eventual reply. He wonders if it could be, at the same time, a sheepish apology.

“About time you came back for a visit.” Bobby says gruffly, “When was the last time?”

Dean smiles guiltily as he settles onto a chair by the desk. “Years ago.”

Bobby ducks out into the kitchen and calls out, “Just because you’re a hotshot doctor now don’t mean you can skip out on me, boy.”

The pen on the desk finds its way into Dean’s hands. “It’s got nothing to do with that.”

When Bobby returns, he has two bottles of beer and hands Dean one. “At least Cas comes by every few weeks.”

“Oh?” Dean says, eyes lost for an unnoticeable second before it disappears behind a swig of his beer, “He’s got time.” he says, and regrets it thereafter, sees the lines on Bobby’s face shift just slightly, b _ecause what kind of time does Cas have_ —

He takes a swig almost immediately after.

“So, what can this beat up place do for you today?” Bobby asks, leaning back into his chair.

Dean rises from his seat. “Just want to walk around.”

Bobby nods. “‘Course.”

Dean is on the last step down the porch when Bobby leans by the door frame. He says the words like he knows—of course he knows.

“The Impala’s at the back.”

Dean doesn’t find it as much as he searches for it like it’s a crushing need, and when he does, he feels air in his lungs and freedom within his limbs. He finds an open toolbox on the workbench right next to it and knows it’s Cas’, because the driver’s seat is pushed cardboard-straight like how Cas prefers it, and the car window is rolled down just a peep like how Cas demands it. He finds notes taped on the dashboard, _clean the tailpipe_ , _replace tire rims_ , _refill battery fluid_ , every single bit a reminder to a process that could have been years in the making, one that he used to be a part of.

Dean takes _reattach gasket head_ and crumples it in his hand. He lifts the hood and props it up.

 

 

 

 

 

Photographed by: [ Horst Kiechle ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/archisculpture/15064115451/)

Edit by: [ likeafieldmouse ](http://likeafieldmouse.com/post/27362531437/horst-kiechle-archisculpture-paper-torso-2012)

 

 

 

 

 

The next time Dean comes back—three days after—there is surprise on Bobby's face and a note removed from the dashboard. _Polish seats_ is gone, and when Dean runs his fingers against the leather of the car's interior, it's smooth to the touch. He takes _Replace coolant_ and crumples it as he places the jug of Rudson's onto the workbench.

The next next time Dean comes back—seven days after the last time—there is still surprise on Bobby's face, still present albeit milder, and more crumpled post its are littered along the passenger's seat. He finds little things have changed within the car; the window controls don't jiggle anymore, the flooring is substantially cleaner, the glove compartment hammered back into position. When he removes _Reattach gasket_ , he tries to not notice the glaringly present _Thank you_ stuck on the empty jug of coolant. (He takes it with him uncrumpled by the end of the day.)

The indefinite next time Dean comes back—an approximation of fourteen days since the first—he sits on the driver's seat and doesn't crumple anything in his fists. A man was wheeled into the emergency room early this morning, and the first responder tells him in a breathless but steady voice, _Heart Failure_. It is not Castiel on the bed, but Dean tries to save him like he very well could be. He almost loses a patient today. Bobby ventures out to where Dean is and slips a beer through the rolled down window. _You okay kid?_ he gently asks, and Dean has to fight tooth and nail not to say _no_.

The most recent time Dean comes back is after two months, and the final count is this: 24 crumpled post it notes, 12 off days spent in car repairs, 1 functional car, 0 notes written in reply to the 32 conversational ones left in various places within the vehicle.

The last note is somewhat a note, but is more so a key, left in the driver's seat waiting and expectant. _The heart is an elaborate engine_ , he slots it into the ignition, _and the world doesn't need another broken one. Let yourself be okay._

The 1962 Chevy Impala roars to life.

Dean drives it to 340 E 34th Street Plaza East.

 

 

 

 

 

Photographed by: [ Horst Kiechle ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/archisculpture/15064115451/)

 

 

 

 

 

“Half of the people who gets diagnosed with heart failure die within five years of diagnosis.”

Cas blinks at Dean who is standing on his front porch, both feet perfectly nestled on the two footprints of his welcome mat.

“You're going to die.” Dean says; an affirmation of a mistake, a preamble to an admittance to a fault, and Cas can hear pain in his voice like it has been tacked there for years and years.

“But just let me be there from day one of the fucking marathon.”

Dean looks at Cas, helpless. “I can’t be in an emergency room everyday, scared shitless that it’s gonna be you wheeled into the next bed.”

“I can’t do it anymore.”

A moment of silence passes, receding as quickly as it persisted.

“Dean,” Cas says under his breath, “When you ask for an out, you stay out. There's only so many times I can be okay with watching you leave.”

Dean shakes his head. “Then I'm all in.”

Cas remains wordless, a small breath being the only sound ever slipping out of his lips. Dean keeps steady, planting his feet down onto Cas' mat stubbornly. When Cas finally moves, it’s to open the door wider to let Dean in.

(The heart is an engine,)

(The heart is an engine.)

 

 

 

 

 

**How to Unwittingly Kill Your Friend: A Guide.**

  
  
  
  
                                                             


	2. Part 2

_ Chapter 5: The three stories of three perspectives of three persons. _

 

 

 

 

 

1

 

“I'm just saying.” There's a pause, and Eddie's eyes flick up expectantly as he replaces the almost empty tray of burger steak with a teeming one, “You don't have to be here all the fucking time.”

“Dean, I sort of own this hospital.”

“Walk around neurology then.”

The dark-haired man has this smirk on his face. “I like emerg.”

 _Oh. He likes emerg._ Eddie edges towards the register and casts another look. He strains his ears at the voices as he removes one disposable glove and readjusts his hair net. It kept snagging at the hairline, and it's giving him a ridiculous sort of itch.

“Why are you so flustered?”

“I am not— _flustered_ —stop laughing, I just hold a specific kind of reputation here, okay, and if you keep on pursuing me like this—”

“Hmm, pursuing is a strong word.”

“You know what I mean, dammit.”

“What is this reputation you're talking about?”

Blond (sort of) doctor mumbles something Eddie can't hear.

“What?”

The doctor mumbles again, half hiding behind his sandwich.

“I literally cannot hear—”

 

“ _Doctor Sexy,_ ” the doctor grits out, and the dark-haired man bursts into laughter.

_Oh my god._

“Dean,” Dark hair wheezes, eyes crinkled at the corners, “Please tell me you're joking.”

_Finally, a name._

Doctor Sexy only seethes in return. “It's the nurses, they're _cruel_ —Cas, shut up—”

_Cas? Weird, but whatever,_

Dark hair rubs the back of his hand against his eyes, still chortling. “Best day of my shortened life.”

Eddie can smell the unmistakable stench of something just starting to burn, so he speeds back into the kitchen and checks all his pans. Mary comes up to him and bumps an elbow into his side.

“Well?” she asks excitedly, like she's expecting a good soap opera episode recap.

Eddie raises a hand in praise. “We have names.”

“We have names!” Mary cheers as she steps out of the kitchen and into the serving station. A student is first in line, and out of the periphery of her eyes, reads the name Jeremy Manning from the name tag pinned on his scrubs.

“Pick what you want kid, it's on the house.”

 

 

 

 

 

2

 

 

_Fig. 4: The six areas of attachment for EKG chest leads_

 

 _Lead Number 1: Fourth intercostal space at the right sternal border_ , Jeremy Manning recites in his head, and his foot gets caught at the slightly intertwined wires that find their way to the floor. He tries to recover by pressing the electrode onto the patient's skin as smoothly as possible. He breathes. _Lead Number 2: Fourthintercostal space at the left sternal border._

This is Jeremy's first EKG run. The peripheral leads are easy to attach, which is why he's already gotten it out of the way. The chest leads are a different ball game.

 _Lead Number 3: Fifth rib or fourth?_ —his fingers hovers from one spot to the other— _fifth, at the spot between the left sternal border and midclavicular line._

This is not Castiel Novak's first electrocardiogram, though, Jeremy realizes about an hour ago as he looks into the patient chart, along with fifty or so pages of diagnostic records dating back to the day he was born. Hypoplastic Heart Disease, or something of the sort, and he remembers glazing over his instructor's vivid explanation of the pathophysiology of it because there's pounding in his ears like all his body circulation centralized itself within his head.

He looks out to the small glass window and sees his instructor jotting down some notes on her notepad, maybe something along the lines of 'the student shows incompetence in performing tasks', or the more probable 'he dropped five of the six chest leads on the floor already'.

_Shit._

_Lead Number 4.._ Jeremy scratches at the adhesive backing repeatedly, _Shit, Lead Number 4—_ he feels like he's trying to pick up a coin on the floor with his nails just recently trimmed off—“The pad of your finger.”

Castiel Novak looks at him, so, so polite like he's completely unperturbed of his inefficacy, “It's easier that way.”

Jeremy tries to say okay and ends up nodding instead, and with one motion he peels away the paper. “Oh, wow,” he blurts, until he realizes how majestically stupid the words sounded coming from a healthcare provider, but Castiel Novak is already waving his embarrassment away like it doesn't at all matter.

 _Lead Number 4: fifth intercostal space at the midclavicular line—_ Jeremy plants an adhesive almost immediately.  The next few leads come to him easier. _Lead Number 5: Sixth rib at the anterior axillary line,_

“Feeling okay?” Castiel Novak asks gently. _Lead Number 6: Sixth rib at the midaxillary line._

Jeremy nervously laughs. “I should be asking you that question.”

“Well,” Castiel Novak answers, “When half of your heart is, quite literally, missing from the day you were born, you learn how to adapt to it.”

“I'm sorry.” Jeremy says with sincerity, clipping on the wiring with as much precision as he could, “It must be hard.”

“You know your anatomy and physiology, correct?” Castiel Novak smiles. “Do you know how many things must happen in order for the human body to thrive?”

Jeremy looks at him questioningly as he boots up the electrocardiogram.

“Millions. One cell splits into two, and then into three, and then they split a thousand different times, and then a thousand more, on and on and on. All these minuscule things, somehow, know within themselves that they have to coalesce and differentiate at the same time. They form billions of tissues and organs and systems of different kinds and then,” Castiel Novak motions towards Jeremy, “There's you.”

The electrocardiogram is left untouched.

“You don't feel it now, but everything in your entire being has to function in a perfect routine made up of billions and billions of little ticking parts—from the surface of your skin, down to the little protein structures of your minuscule cells—in order for you to be breathing oxygen into our lungs, right here, right now. Millions of motions that must be perfectly executed beneath your skin, and you're not even aware it's happening.”

“So, some one-half of my heart made a little mistake.” Castiel Novak says lightly, “One measly wrong out of a million rights.”

Castiel Novak reaches out for the start button and starts the machine up himself.

“I don't think that is something worth being sorry for.”

Jeremy nods faintly, a small smile starting to pull at a corner of his lips. “Yeah.”

That night, Jeremy's phone rings.

_Guess who got you a part time job._

Jeremy Manning hops onto his bed, rolling as he smiles into a pillow.

“Dana Han, as I live and breathe.”

 

 

 

 

 

3

 

Dana Han slips her apron on and reaches back to tie the strings around her waist. Cinema Cafe is stamped in print onto the surface, and she scratches at the first capital C to dislodge the paint that had transferred from her fingers to the cloth. She gathers her hair up, ties it the best she can, and dutifully ignores the fact that she missed a lock of hair at the back of her neck.

 

 

              TIP JAR CONTENTS – 2014/08/19 6AM: $00.00

 

 

Dana Han is the type of person who doesn't care for a messed up ponytail, or for the thin, accidental streaks of acrylic up the the length of her forearm. Dana Han is the type of person, however, who is particular of the amount of sun that streams through the blinds of the cafe, who notices the smallest details of how a person's face is shaped no matter how quick the glance. For example, the old man who is her first customer has a specific wiriness to his beard, all crunched up towards his chin, all the while noting that the blinds need the slightest bit of adjustment before 8AM sets in.

 

 

              TIP JAR CONTENTS – 2014/08/19 7AM: $01.00

 

 

Today, Dana Han is trying to analyze personality through coffee orders. Customer number one orders a Cafe Latte—not too driven by the outside world, treats caffeinated drinks as gentle rowboats that ferry him through an early morning. Customer number two orders a caramel frappuccino—energetic and fast paced, probably runs back and forth from one office to another. Customer number three orders Espresso Forte with an extra shot of caffeine—truly stressed, bordering on neurotic. Customer number four and five are always together, but four never orders anything, while five orders something akin to what customer number three always gets. So, either a taxi driver or a doctor.

 

 

              TIP JAR CONTENTS – 2014/08/19 8AM: $07.05

 

 

“I think it's worth it.” Four says nonchalantly and Five snickers in return.

“What is your concept of cost and revenue, even?” Five says as he walks forward, “Remind me never to take stock market advice from you, ever.”

“It's easy for you.” Four prods Five, “When the market is saturated with goods the demand decreases. You've had your entire life—”

“The thing is, when it comes to this one good, I'm the 100% legally operating business transaction.” Five argues, “You're the fucking black market.”

“You're exaggerating, Dean.”

Dana Han coughs. “Excuse me?”

Four and Five find themselves at the front of the line.

“Is there something I can help you two with?”

Four leans over the counter. “If I'm a man dying of a heart condition who has been bereft of coffee due to being contraindicated against caffeine in relation to said disease, would you think it's worth it for me to taste coffee at this very moment knowing any moment in the future could be my last, or do the risks outweigh the benefits?”

Five groans into his hand.

Dana Han blinks a few times. “No.”

Four looks at her questioningly.

“No, it's not worth it.” Dana Han clarifies, “Coffee is just burnt bean juice. I don't want your death certificate to say 'death by burnt bean juice'. That's a sad way to go.”

Five laughs openly, reaches into his wallet, and dumps some cash into Dana Han's tip jar. “That was awesome,” he squints at her name tag, “Dana Han. I owe you. Give me a medium Espresso Forte with an extra espresso shot and a pump of vanilla.”

Four grins and drops a few bills into the jar as well. “You raised an excellent point. I'll have a bottle of orange juice, please.”

“Crush your meds and stir them in water if you really want to know what it tastes like.” Dana Han hears Five say as they move to the pick up area.

Customer Six impatiently moves to the front of the line, and Dana Han tries not to laugh.

 

 

              TIP JAR CONTENTS – 2014/08/19 8:10AM: $53.05

 

 

 

 

 

_ Chapter 6 _

 

 

 

 

 

“You have got to be kidding me.” Anna Milton says as she stands by Cas' door.

Nobody moves from their respective positions of sitting in front of a canvas with a paint brush in hand and lounging on the couch with a particularly thick medical-surgical textbook laid on the coffee table. Anna Milton roughly takes her bag and slings it onto the coat rack.

“What is this?” she says, one finger moving back and forth from Dean to Cas' direction. Dean only looks at Cas in a brief question.

“Calm down.” Cas finally says as he scratches his nose with the tip of his paint brush, “It isn't what you think it is.”

“Well, can you kindly explain then?”

Dean's mouth opens and then closes. He points to himself. “I'm studying for a skills refresher course,” he then awkwardly points towards Cas' direction, “He's painting, I don't know, a naked dude?”

“Not all art is about naked men, Dean.”

“Tell that to the penis-looking thing on your canvas.”

Anna shakes her head in disbelief. “This is ridiculous—it's like 2012 didn't happen.” she stabs a finger towards Cas' direction, “You disappeared to god knows where,” she stabs the same finger towards Dean's direction, “And you almost ruined your last year of pre-med,”

“And now, you're just—” Anna frantically motions both hands towards their general direction, “Hanging out? Again?”

Dean tries for another more self-preserving narrative of the situation, but finds himself empty handed. “Yeah, I guess?”

Anna shakes her head. “I am gonna lose my shit.”

“Can you lose whatever you have to lose about five steps back, please?” Cas says, holding a hand out in front of his work space, “These are the last of my Italian brand paints.”

Dean highlights a few lines and flips a page. “Yeah, Anna. Italian.”

She breathes heavily, reaching out to press her fingers against her temples. “Have you told Michael?”

Cas doesn't look up from his palette. “Why?”

Anna throws her hands in the air in surrender. “I can't deal with this right now. I need to get all these sculptures to the museum by this afternoon, and if I start poking around in both your businesses, I'll never get done.”

“I see you're still illegally storing really expensive art in your brother's flat.” Dean smirks as he watches Anna reattach the top lids back onto all of the opened crates.

Anna huffs as she lifts one into her arms. “I see you're still quite the asshole.”

“You need some help moving your illegal wares?” Dean asks loud enough for Anna to hear.

Anna steps down the staircase as she yells back, “Yes!”

When Dean comes back to Cas, he has a five dollar bill in one hand.

Cas covers his mouth with a paint-speckled hand. “Oh god. She tipped you.”

Dean gives Abraham Lincoln a small wave. “Tried to slip it into my pants all Magic Mike style.”

Cas laughs so hard he almost tips his brush holder over.

 

 

 

 

 

There is nothing more sinister than an entire array of bright orange medicine bottles all huddled together like little soldiers arming themselves for war.

As with every battle, perception is destructive. The more bullets you have in your magazine, the more real your enemy gets. One orange bottle is supplementation. Two orange bottles, maybe light infection. Three could be something more persistent, like colitis. But four—four makes people look at you different.

By the time Cas is old enough to move from suspensions and syrups to solid medication, people have been looking at him different. It's his dad, first and foremost, as he takes the paper bag from the pharmacist the very first time and realizing the weight of all the prescriptions within both hands. And then his sisters and brothers, as they try to grapple with the threadbare explanation offered to them by every adult who chooses to leave out the fact that their youngest brother will one day die before his time. And then Cas' friends, who think all the pills are hard candy and that Cas is so, so lucky to have half a heart—not knowing that each medication tastes like solid uncertainty and borrowed time.

Dean doesn't look at Cas different.

Dean's eyes are trained to see bright orange bottles like they're just any other bottle in the world. He holds them in his hands like he knows the pills won't break easy if he tosses it to Cas for the day's dose. He doesn't glaze over with confusion when he skims the labels, nor does his brow furrow as he struggles to figure out what kind of sad story this one person has in order to merit nine bottles of prescribed pills.

There used to be days in the far, far past when Dean would always prop fallen bottles back onto their feet, nervously arranging them into perfect order, like letting the pills move within their own space would alter their efficacy. He'd look worried when Cas tosses his bottles around, _because why would you play with your soldiers like they're of the toy variety when you have real warfare ravaging your heart and paralyzing your lungs_ —

Cas looks back at Dean, who's tipping his medicine bottles one by one out of boredom.

“Cipro.” he says, and Dean does a small salute. He picks a soldier from its line and tosses it towards Cas' direction.

Cas makes the only offensive move he has in his arsenal—he pops a pill into his mouth, and Dean dumps himself on Cas’ couch, grinning at him for no apparent reason at all.

Cas pushes down a smile.

(The war is almost easier.)

 

 

 

 

 

“You said this is gonna be worth stealing my lunch break.” Dean huffs as he tries to speed walk in time with Cas' pedalling.

“I promised no such thing.” Cas answers, unbuttoned polo shirt whipping behind him. He scratches the neck of his white undershirt, swerving a little until he can get the other hand back onto the handlebar.

“I'm still in my fucking scrubs.” Dean complains as he shifts the plastic bag to his other arm, letting some sensation flood back into his fingers.  “What are these for?”

“Happiness.”

Dean huffs again, reconsidering Sam's advice on the fast food. “Cas, please, no cryptic messages when I'm hungry.”

The brakes screech loudly as Cas immediately hops off his bicycle, leaning it onto the bark of a nearby tree. Dean looks around and finds himself in a slightly shabby street he doesn't usually frequent, nothing but a laundromat and a small, measly cafe the only noteworthy establishments in this specific block. Cas slings his backpack off his shoulders, rummages quickly into it, and produces a set of paper stencils folded neatly into manageable squares. He unravels it and urgently looks at Dean. “Help me put them up.”

Dean grabs a sticky corner. “Is this illegal shit?”

“Yes, but this is for artistic purpose.” Cas says as he pats down the stencil edges against the concrete wall.

“That'll sure hold up in court.”

“Dean, please?”

Dean looks at Cas for a good five seconds before grabbing the plastic bag and tossing Cas a can of blue spray paint. “Fine, I'll be your lookout.”

Cas smirks as he shakes the can and uncaps it with ease. “What, you thought I brought you here to be something else?”

“Ha ha, funny.” Dean says, grinning slightly, “Maybe some jail time will give you a fresh life perspective.”

“I think the heart disease is doing a good enough job of that.” Cas answers, a small smile tugging at his lips as he fills in certain spaces with a soft kind of blue, “Do what you want to do. Don't scare yourself. Be kind to your mind. Be loving to your mistakes. Involve yourself with charity work.”

Dean squints against the sunlight and decides to step out of its way. “So, why this street?” he asks, pressing his side against the bark of a tree, “There’s literally nobody here. Who’s gonna see your art if it’s tucked away in some barren area?”

“Places always have somebody in them.” Cas says, giving the stencil edges a final press, “Can you pass me the yellow?”

Dean sifts through the bag and holds a can up in the air. “Gold?”

“No yellow?”

“Just gold. Unless you forgot it?”

“No, I think I bought this because they ran out of aureolin—”

“Yes gold?”

“Yes gold.”

Cas holds a hand up and catches Golden Poppy with one swipe. “I want to do this until I die.” he says lightly, taking another smaller stencil and gingerly placing it against the concrete, “Anything that allows me a semblance of being alive. I'd rather pass climbing a mountain and seeing stars than live with a rebreather mask around my face.”

Cas peels off all the stencils and holds another one against the wall. He sprays another layer of gold and doesn't bother with the bead of paint that touches his finger and runs down towards his elbow in a metallic rivulet. “I want dirt on my fingers and gold on my arms.”

He sniffs a sneeze back and looks at Dean, who is still leaning against the tree, silent. Realization rises in his face in a swift crescendo. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have assumed you were comfortable with talking about things like these.”

Dean remains unmoving in his spot. Cas presses his lips and uncomfortably caps Golden Poppy with a stiff click.

“No,” Dean says softly, finally, “Tell me everything.”

Cas bites down onto his lip, tries not to look too overjoyed—but it doesn't work and the smile just burgeons from his mouth and across his cheeks until it reaches his eyes, and it sits there, where the truest smiles are meant to exist.

Dean gives Ivory a slight shake. “Yes white?”

Cas nods, still smiling. “Yes white.”

(After an hour or so, they wait behind a parked car from the other side of the road. Dean is scarfing down the last of his sandwich when Cas taps on his arm, urging him to look. An exhausted-looking woman heaves two baskets of clothes into the laundromat, heading directly to the far corner for the trustiest machines. Her five children spill out the door and into the sidewalk, all manners of jumping and screaming. They stumble into the newly painted wall and stare in wonder.

The little girl squeals in happiness, which sets off a happy symphony.

Cas smiles and motions for them to go.

They leave 17th street with three things that day--a wall painted with a shining field of sunflowers, coins slotted in the last two washing machines and dryers by the corner of the laundromat, and five happy children.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“ _Damn, I swear to god—_ ”

The impala rumbles beneath their legs, almost in agreement. The wind slips into the slightly rolled down windows and whips against their skin, the road stretching before them like a hand beckoning.

“It’s an important movie.” Dean says, and Cas just looks at him curiously.

“‘Important’ is a relative term.”

“A human being, on average, quotes that movie about three to five times a day.”

Cas takes a pointed sip from his water bottle. “Sounds scientific. I believe you now, for sure.”

“Okay, who doesn’t know Mean Girls though? How have you not watched Mean Girls?” Dean asks, one hand on the steering wheel, the other in the air in gesticulation, “It’s a teenage girl’s holy bible.”

Cas laughs, air bursting in puffs from his lips, the same way the wind fans his hair all over. “Have I been hanging out with a teenage girl for the past few months?”

“You’ve been hanging out with a cultured teenage girl for the past few months.” Dean says pointedly, “Because I have watched Mean Girls.”

“You’re a unique, special person, Dean.” Cas snickers, “I’m glad I got to meet you in this lifetime.”

Dean chews on his lower lip. “Hey. What do you think would have happened if we didn’t meet in college?”

Cas taps a finger against his chin. “You would have failed Anatomy and Physiology.”

“Excuse me?” Dean laughs in disbelief, “That’s bullshit. I would have been okay.”

“You would have failed Sharma’s exam and ended up trying to scrap together some extra credit work.”

Dean shakes his head, still laughing. “Fuck no.”

“Probably end up in a ditch somewhere—”

“What—”

Cas teasingly smirks. “You would also have opted out from a great amount of happiness and joy just by the virtue of not meeting me. You’d just have a horrible, horrible time, I believe.”

“I believe that too.” Dean says, contentment in his voice, the affirmation so sudden that Cas looks at him in mild surprise. “I wouldn’t have imagined that time and place any other way.”

“Yeah?” Cas manages the word out, and Dean nods slightly.

Cas looks at him expectantly. “Well? Aren’t you going to say anything else?”

Dean looks back. “What else do I have to say?”

“Everything else.” Cas prods on, “There’s so much more you’re wanting to say, I can feel it.”

Dean hums under his breath. “Appreciate what you already got.”

Cas shakes his head, his lips in between a soft smile and an unbelieving grin.

“You,” he says, “are a little shit.”

 

 

 

 

 

The waves, the birds chirping overhead, the scrunch of sand beneath their feet.

Cas pushes the red button on his recorder and holds it up in the air.

“My god,” Cas says, laughing, as he dips his toes into the sand.

Dean feels like everything is right in the world.

 

 

 

 

 

“Have you ever blamed a fart on somebody?”

Cas takes a sip from his juice. “No.”

“Points.” Dean prods the side of Cas’ face. “I agree. Farts are the type of things that you should take responsibility of, not wrongfully pass on to others.”

“Taking the high road.” Cas says, amused, “I’m proud of you.” He taps a finger against his chin. “Have you ever _not_ lied to a telemarketer?”

Dean blinks in realization. “No.”

“No points!” Cas prods a finger in the air, Dean wildly waves his hands in gesticulation.

“Wait a fucking minute, there’s literally no other way to deal with telemarketers.” Dean urges.

“Tell them you’re not interested.” Cas laughs.

“In what fucking universe does that work?”

“This universe, the same one that allows people to refuse stuff they don’t want.”

Dean furrows his brow. “Well, have you ever _not_ lied to Jehovah’s Witness people knocking at your door?”

Cas looks at Dean in mild surprise. “Well—”

“Ha,” Dean yells, pumping his fist in the air, “No points!”

“Okay, okay, calm down Winchester.” Cas chuckles, swatting Dean’s overly zealous fingers coming towards his direction so he can poke at his cheeks. “No, ugh—let me think of a question, my god—”

Cas snaps his fingers, sitting up excitedly. “I have the perfect one.”

“‘Perfect’ is a relative term.” Dean teases, and Cas waves him away.

“This is a work of art.” Cas says proudly. “You ready?”

Dean gives Cas’ cheeks a few final pokes. “Bring it, nerd.”

Cas grins. “Have you ever, in your entire career as a doctor, even in the slightest manner possible, looked at a patient’s butt and thought: ‘damn’?”

Dean looks floored, before he coughs, sits straighter, and presses his lips together

“I didn’t say damn per se—”

Cas jumps to his feet and yells in victory.

 

 

 

 

 

Dean re-stabs the end of the umbrella into the sand and buries it under a heap with his feet.

He puffs out a big exhale and looks down at Cas who’s spread eagled on top of a towel, the fabric of his sweater and sweatpants combo accumulating more and more granules of sand as he shifts his legs into another position.

“Nerd.” Dean smirks.

“Bully.” Cas drowsily says, stretching his arms a bit.

“Was that uncalled for?” Dean asks as he dumps himself on the empty spot beside Cas.

Cas gives him a look of feigned disapproval. “So, so mean. You know I can’t temperature-regulate as good as you do. Owing to my malformed heart and everything.”

“Excuses.” Dean does a few arm stretches himself, “We’re gonna go in the water, you know that, right? That’s the point of going to the beach.”

Cas stifles a yawn. “I’m pretty sure I know beach protocol.”

Dean pats Cas’ head sympathetically. “Don’t worry, I’ll blow up your inflatable and hold your hand so you don’t get washed away.”

Cas props himself up on one elbow, brow furrowed. “Are you implying I’m a coward?”

“I’m implying you’re a piss baby.”

Cas settles back onto his back, hands forming a pillow underneath his head. “You will be proven wrong, motherfucker.”

Dean rummages through the contents of his duffel bag. “How are you feeling?”

“Again?” Cas groans softly.

“Hey, you agreed, once every week.” Dean says pointedly, nudging his foot against Cas’ outstretched leg, “I get to ask how you are once every week. That was our deal.”

“You have a point.” Cas licks his lips leisurely. “I feel fine. A bit more winded with long walks, sometimes.”

“Yeah, I noticed that a while ago. Chest pain?” Dean asks, and Cas shrugs.

“Manageable by meds.”

Dean reaches into his bag for his sunglasses. “Anything out of the ordinary?”

Cas looks like he’s about to say something.

“I—” Cas starts until he stumbles into a stop, embarrassment in the way his lips twitch into a slight frown. He gathers himself and pushes up to a seated position. “Dean,” he says nervously, and the slight tremor in his voice makes Dean look on with worry.

“Sometimes,” Cas blinks down at his feet furiously, a normally calm soul flushed with shame, “Sometimes I’d wake up to a wet bed.”

It takes Dean a few moments to understand what was said. He looks at Cas the softest way he can, painfully taking in the humiliation that scores the man’s skin in dispirited frowns and ragged breaths.

“I can’t be—I’m not going incontinent, am I?” Cas stammers more than asks, “Am I losing even that?”

Cas, who knows the ins and outs of his own body like the back of his own hand. Cas, who has studied his own anatomy from the moment he realized his is different from others. Questioning, Confused, Terrified.

Dean breathes out heavily, hand grazing the base of his chin in contemplation. “I don’t know, Cas. We have to watch out for it longer to know for sure.”

Cas’ lips are pressed together as he gulps down the lump on his throat. He looks away, eyes trailing the distant horizon.

 _This is the worst_ , Dean thinks and believes and just knows—that this is the worst that could ever be. Cas can deal with a life slotted into strict medication schedules and monthly EKGs; _don’t run the marathons you are dying to run, don’t climb the mountains you’d give anything to climb; don’t be too happy but don’t be too sad_ —Cas, Cas can fathom and allow all that into himself. But to lose the things that forms the basis of being a functional human being—to see, to speak, to walk, to bathe, to urinate without anybody’s help—to lose all these small yet big things, are the truest fears of a sick person.

Death is not the storm.

Helplessness is.

Cas gathers his hands and tightly curls his fingers against each other.

Dean does nothing but sit—as intimately, as benevolently, as supportively—by Cas’ side.

 

 

 

 

 

Cas pads both feet against the sand, hands pulling down against the strings of the hoodie covering his head. He shudders. “It’s cold, it’s cold, I didn’t expect it to be this cold,”

“It’s only for a few minutes,” Dean assures, softly digging an elbow against Cas’ side.

Cas turns to Dean. “I changed my mind. I’m a piss baby, I can’t handle this.”

“You’re not a piss baby, ever.” Dean says, “And you should appreciate how much effort it took to say those words because that means I’m admitting I was wrong.”

“Damn it,” Cas stammers, rubbing both hands against his exposed cheeks, “I don’t know, what if I—” he trails off, unwilling to fill in the rest of the words. He shuffles his feet against the sand some more.

“Hey,” Dean nudges, looking at him softly, “Anything that allows a semblance of being alive. To pass climbing a mountain and seeing stars.”

Cas looks back at him for a few fleeting seconds, and then looks challengingly at the bright orange sun seemingly dipping itself into the sea. “Than live with a rebreather mask around my face.” he says under his breath.

“Yeah?” Dean asks, and Cas nods.

Dean holds a hand out. _Here._

Cas threads his fingers against Dean’s. _Thanks._

They take small steps; they allow themselves the smallest ones, hesitant, testing, searching. The sand that was once dry is now moist against their soles; it gathers in small heaps in between their toes with every step forward

 

 

And then, the ocean around their ankles.

 

 

Cas visibly flinches, the water hitting his skin like cold fingers grabbing his feet.

“Jeez,” Cas mutters.

“You’re okay.” Dean says gently. “Yeah?”

Cas, again, nods.

They walk on, and now it’s like it’s a softly dispensed challenge. Their steps turn into strides, larger, faster, feistier against the push of the waves against their knees, foot prints deep and heavy against the loose sand beneath their feet. Cas breathes in through his lips, heart pounding and blood thrumming against his skin. He ignores it and swallows air into his body as if to taste the salt in the wind— _to pass climbing a mountain, to pass seeing stars._

 

 

And then, the ocean everywhere.

 

 

Cas shivers beneath his clothes, but grins—not chuckles, not smiles—but lets his mouth form the greatest smile he could muster. “My god,” he yells over the encompassing wind.

Dean turns to Cas, the gust throwing his hair in undecipherable directions. “How’re you feeling?” he yells back.

“Fine,” Cas laughs, shaking his head, because fine? No. He feels transcendent. He feels boundless. He squints and covers his eyes with the back of one hand.

“When I said I couldn’t imagine that time and place a different way,” Dean says loudly, squinting one eye upon a great gust of air, “I meant it like this,”

“That it physically hurts to think of me being in that junkyard with you not there.” he says over the whistle of the wind and the crash of the waves,  “That my brain rejects any other scenario—that I could be given five hundred versions of my life, and you, and me, and engines, and anatomy cheat sheets, would be the one thing that will always be.”

Cas stands his ground as firmly as he looks at Dean softly.

“You don’t complete my life—you build upon it. I’m me, in these very seconds, because of you. The entirety of you.” Dean presses these words into Cas’ hands, take it, “Just because you’ve soiled a few sheets doesn’t mean you’re any less.”

“You’re gonna be you, no matter what.” Dean says, “The same you who’s gonna be in my first life as an emergency doctor, down to the very, very last.”

Cas smiles, sniffing. “What’s your last?” he asks.

Dean slings an arm around Cas’ neck, smiling back.

“A telemarketer.”

Cas laughs, eyes beneath one hand.

They stand with their feet planted into the sand and waves against their waist until they can’t anymore

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dean settles back onto the couch, a refilled bowl of popcorn in both hands.

_Get in loser, we’re going shopping!_

“Oh,” Cas says in recognition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_ Chapter 6 _

 

 

 

 

 

“I'm gonna be gone for a few days.” Five says as he sips on his morning Espresso Forte.

Four sips his morning bottle of orange juice. “Okay.”

 

 

 

 

 

Cas places the recorder on the surface of the table.

“You think I can still make it?” he asks, his index finger scratching at the side of his thumb in trepidation.

Anna picks it up in one hand and flips it until the miniature screen is facing up. “How much time do you need?”

Cas looks at his fidgeting hands in thought. “A few weeks? Three, maybe four?”

Anna breathes out, tapping a finger against her lip as her grip on the recorder tightens slightly. After a few seconds, she gives him a small nod, dedication visible in the way her eyes hold their gaze against his.

“Okay. I'll write in your submission and acceptance of submission.” she says steadily, “Just be sure to give it to me as soon as possible, okay?”

Cas' worry crumbles into relief, and he releases a small laugh. “Thank you, Anna, I can't even begin—”

“You're my brother.” Anna waves his words off as she smiles softly, “I'd do anything for you, you know that.”

“Even risk your position at Met?” Cas grins.

“Yes.” she smiles, “All the potential lawsuits included.”

It is only then that their surroundings truly start to come around, the collective chatter within the tables rising and making itself present within their ears. The lights are a soft, dim yellow, and they cast down onto the entire restaurant from a pristine chandelier above everybody's heads. The waiters are bow-tied, the patrons dressed and suited, and the orchestra is playing a familiar tune Cas cannot peg a name onto.

“You really sure about Dean?” Anna says in all its singularity and doesn't say anything else.

“I am.” Cas answers.

Anna nods. “Okay.”

“So,” Cas says as he brings the wine glass at eye level, “Why Eleven Madison Park, all of a sudden?” He takes a sip and lets the water sit in his mouth before gulping it down.

Anna starts slicing a piece off her steak. “You know why.”

“Is it the same excuse again?” Cas mutters under his breath, uncharacteristically unsettled all of a sudden. “Does he even try to lie better?”

“He's just—” Anna tries, but ultimately fails, “Michael can't. He can't come see you.”

Cas twirls some pasta into his fork. “Good to know.”

“Cas,”

“No, Anna.” Cas says firmly as his grip on his utensils falters, “It's a birthday.”

Anna looks down onto her plate, and then to Cas, who’s battling with the quivering of his hands.

“It's a birthday, my birthday, _mine_ —” he says, again and again, before he closes his eyes and stops.

He breathes.

“I'm sorry.”

Anna holds Cas' hand tightly.

“It's alright.”

When  Cas gets back home, he takes out his phone and performs the social calls necessary for today's occasion: he reads through the texts, skims the e-mails, opens the greeting cards, listens to the voice messages. He sends them all grateful replies back and afterwards tosses his phone onto the couch, letting himself collapse next to it. It bounces off the cushion and it topples to the floor.

 _It's a birthday_ , Cas tells himself.

Birthdays are cakes and candles for people who don't have to count their years. Birthdays are presents and balloons and unified choruses when no doctor has given you your average life expectancy. It's pounding music and blaring strobe lights and 21 shots for 21 years if your genetics have not failed your body since the day you were born.

Birthdays for Cas are completions of cycles.

Birthdays are conclusions of seconds and minutes and hours all preserved so meticulously, spent as fully as he possibly could, because he has no knowledge of how much time he's allotted in the future. Birthdays are seventeen years of amoxicillin, a sudden antibiotic resistance, and half a month of trying desperately for a replacement. Birthdays are Anna, Gabriel, and Balthazar visiting him in his hospital room, smiling reassuringly at him as if he could see their mouths through the mandatory hospital face masks. Birthdays are the turning points where his body finally— _finally_ — responds to ciprofloxacin. Birthdays are a dying man's token chips, pieces of plastic he collects as proof of his survival conceptualized in years. Birthdays are reminders of being alive, no matter the quality of life.

It's been years since Cas last saw him.

Cas closes his eyes.

_It's my birthday, and he's my brother._

 

 

 

 

 

Cas is startled awake by a loud ring.

He presses his fingers against his eyes, willing them to fight the sleep off. He pats the couch for his phone and doesn’t find it, so he brings himself to his knees and presses a cheek against the wooden flooring. He spots the device quivering beneath the couch, the screen flashing in panic.

“Hello?” Cas says, “Hello?”

There's a lagging pause before he hears an answer.

_Cas? Jesus—what took you so long—I'm literally on a tree to get better reception and you take your time picking up?!_

Cas can't help but laugh at the prospect of Dean clinging onto a branch. “Where are you?”

_Hook your phone to your flat screen and turn off the lights!_

Cas raises an eyebrow. “No.”

_Wow okay, not at all on the same page here, first of all I'm on a fucking TREE—_

Cas snickers as he unbundles his connector and slots it into the port. “I was kidding.”

 _First of all fuck you,_ the television flickers in and out a few times before it finally projects the video call onto its screen _, second of all,_

 

 

_Happy birthday, Cas._

 

 

Cas' legs slowly fold beneath himself, one palm pitching itself onto the floor as he lets himself crumble into a seated position. He holds both knees against his chest, the gleam of the television screen illuminating his skin and glazes the color of his eyes as he gazes up at the image before him.

 _Coudersport, Pennsylvania_ , Cas hears the sound of a gentle breeze and rustling leaves and he laughs a little under his breath, _A four hour drive_ ,

 

 

(“I'd rather pass climbing a mountain,”)

 

 

_So you can see the stars._

Cas presses a closed fist over his trembling mouth. He laughs shakily. “Shit, Dean,”

 _You like it? Do you really_ —Cas could almost see Dean pump his fist in the air, and he laughs even more— _YES! Yes!_

“I told you not to make me too happy,” he says, blinking back the heaviness in his eyes, “My heart can't take these kinds of things. I just might drop dead.”

The image on the screen topples slightly, and then steadies. _I said I'll try to turn down my charm._

Cas moves closer and watches a star glow brighter than the others, then fade away.

_Hey, Cas._

“Yes?”

_I care for you so fucking much, you know that, right?_

_I care so fucking much for you._

Cas laughs the loudest laugh, hands pressed against his face like he's trying to keep the happiness from escaping into the open where it could dissipate into the air. He heaves oxygen into his lungs as ferociously as he would during times when his body struggles for more of it—only instead of fear, there are stars in his eyes.

“I know. Come home soon.”

At four o'clock in the morning, Dean pulls up on the driveway and rides the elevator to Cas' floor. He walks to 340 and steps onto the footprints on the welcome mat.

At four o'clock in the morning, the door opens, and Cas smiles a true smile, and says _hey_.

At four o'clock in the morning, Dean embraces Cas and Cas embraces back, dried leaves and small pieces of bark pressed between each other's chests.

At four o'clock in the morning, Cas says _thank you_.

At four o'clock in the morning, Dean kisses the top of Cas' head and says _you're welcome._

At four o'clock in the morning,

At four o'clock in the morning,

At four o'clock in the morning.

 

 

 

 

 

_0hr 26min 56sec_

_2014/09/02.wav_

**_File recording.._ **

 

 

 

 

 

_**Rummaging** —What’s this for? Hello? Hello?_

_You are ridiculous._

_Please don't talk while I'm talking—hello?_

_**Laughs.** Oh god. You are such an embarrassment. Total and utter embarrassment._

_What's this for?_

_Well— **rummaging** —some of the most beautiful things can't be captured visually, and so, they are most likely to be forgotten._

_Like the sound the early morning makes, or the sound of rain just when it's about to start. The sound of hair rasping against a pillow when you're trying to rouse yourself from sleep. Words from a stranger you probably won't meet again. The sound of my own heartbeat, and the occasional extra heart sound that sometimes comes along with it._

_All those, I don't want to miss._

_.. Wow. Jesus Christ, Cas._

_Chuckle. Keep it in your pants, Winchester._

_Shit. You should write a book or something. That was really beautiful._

_You think you can jot down material for my future wedding vows? A total tear jerker; I need tears to be flowing afterwards, like full on sobbing and snot-sniffing_ ,

_Cas._

_Hey, you falling asleep on me?_

_Hey—..cold. Shit, you're cold— **rummaging noises** — **stethoscope** —_

_Cas. Cas? Fuck—FUCK, okay—okay, just breathe deeply for me, okay? Just breathe—phone beeping—you listening to me, Cas? I need you to cough, okay, cough as hard as you can, that's it—hello, I need an ambulance at 340 E 34th Street Plaza East, Castiel Novak automated medical file number 563291, no defibrillator on hand please hurry,_

_Hey, Cas,_

_Cas, just breathe, okay, deep breaths,_

_An ambulance blares._

_Breathe deeply,_

_Breathe deeply,_

 

 

 

 

 

_1hr 14min 1sec_

_2014/09/02.wav_

**_RECORDING FINISHED_ **

 

 

[ ](http://yourlisten.com/player/director/17237265.mp3)

_Fig. 5 A recording of a patient suffering a heart arrhythmia_

  



	3. Part 3

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Chapter 7 _

 

 

 

 

 

_“Hi! Oh my gosh you're awake!” A boy says happily as he jumps to his feet, “You were so sleepy for so long!”_

_Another boy blinks blearily, squirming gently under the stark white sheets of his bed. He languidly scratches at the garter sitting at the curve of his ear as he tries to see beyond the layer of mist inside his oxygen mask._

_The boy on the bed mutters, “Please don't call dad,”_

_The boy by the bed looks confused. “Why?”_

_“I didn't fall on purpose, I swear,”_

_The boy beside him has a suspicious look on his face. “Are you sure? You were losing our game pretty bad before we found you.” he pouts._

_“Was not,” the boy on the bed whines._

_“Was toooo.” the boy beside him coos back._

_“Michaeeel..”_

_The boy snickers loudly, jumping onto the chair and propping his elbows onto the bed. “Okay, okay. You're such a big baby.”_

_“Michael, am I gonna die?” the boy on the bed asks, lip already trembling._

_“No silly,” the boy beside him confidently answers, “Kids don't die! Dad said god don't do that kinda' stuff.”_

_The boy on the bed clumsily pushes himself up to a seated position. “But, I feel all weird in the place, where—in—” he struggles to find the right word, “Right here,” he snivels, pointing at his chest, “This place feels weird, and, I can't breathe—sometimes,”_

_The boy by the bed waves him off. “Your heart was just doing a funny dance and got too tired.”_

_“A funny dance?” the boy on the bed asks between sniffs, and the boy beside him hops off the chair._

_“Yeah, like this!” the boy grins and begins to flop around, stomping his feet on the floor and waving his hands above his head. The boy on the bed giggles loudly, his hands cupping around his mask in an attempt to cover his face. The dancing boy lets himself plop on the couch cushions, grinning wide against the pillows._

_“Are you all better?”_

_The boy on the bed lets out his last gentle giggle. “Yeah.”_

_“Wanna call dad now?”_

_The boy on the bed nods, smiling._

_“Okay.”_

 

 

 

 

 

“Hey,”

“Christ, you're awake,”

Cas opens one eye, blinks a few times, before allowing the other to flutter open. He graces himself a few seconds to adjust to the brightness. He squints at the slightly swimming image.

“Sam?”

Sam Winchester laughs under his breath, nodding. “Yeah, Cas, it's me.”

Cas tries for a smile, reaching for his face mask and skewing it away. “I haven't seen you in so long,” he rumbles, the days of sleep roughing his voice into something gravelly, “I wish it was a different circumstance..”

“This is as good as any.” he says, smiling back. “I'm gonna call Dean.”

“Not yet,” Cas grunts quickly, cold fingers reaching for Sam's sleeve instead of his arm, “Please.”

Sam steadily settles himself back onto his seat by the bed, unsure in his words. “.. Okay.”

“Just need five minutes,” he says, “I wouldn't know what to tell him.”

“He just needs to know that you're okay, Cas,” Sam says softly.

“Please,” Cas says in a voice so shaky that it surprises Sam—never has he heard Cas speak like this. Cas has always treated his disease with ease and nonchalance and acceptance, so much so that hearing actual fear in his voice is startling.

Cas presses his eyes closed, his throat moving in a way that speaks of the heaviness he tries to keep down. He sniffs loudly, then breathes out. “I understand,” he mutters because he has no capability of speaking any other way, “He's conscious. He's talking. He remembers everything. That's all it would take for him to breathe a bit better.”

“But it's not just he's conscious. It's also he's going to need a tank of oxygen from now on. It's either wheelchair or bedridden. It's if there's no match by three weeks, he's gone.”

“And I know he's a doctor,” He keeps a hand against his chest like he's begging for it to keep beating beneath his fingers. “And I know he's probably faced the same scenario with different patients and different illnesses.”

“But I just can't, Sam,” he breathes out, languidly blinking his eyes against the sunlight streaming past the room's curtains, “Not without five minutes.”

Sam stills in his seat, the only motions of his body being the hand that slips deep into one pocket. He takes out his ipod, pulls the earphone jack from where its mounted, and places the device on speaker. The ticking sound of an ipod being scrolled fills their ears for a bit, before it is replaced by the leisure melody of a piano.

“This is the first song off the musical score for my play.” he says.

Cas closes his eyes and lifts a corner of his lips into a weak smile.

Sam closes his eyes as well.

“Runs for five minutes.” he hums, “Might as well listen to it because you're my special guest for the opening night.”

“And Dean?”

Sam shrugs, smirking. “He can come too.”

(Five minutes later, Dean walks into the room with the color in his face steady with its return, and with an equally steady smile, Cas reaches out and touches his hand.)

 

 

 

 

 

_“You're awake!” the boy by the bed says._

_The boy on the bed breathes out. “Did my heart get too tired again?”_

_The boy by the bed doesn't say anything for a few moments. He gets himself to smile._

_“Yeah.”_

 

 

 

 

 

Dean steps out from behind a drawn curtain, heading directly to a wash station where he finally finds Jody for the first time today.

“Where the hell have you been?” Dean asks in wonder, reaching over with his dripping hands and giving the nurse a quick hug, “If you've been avoiding me, you're doing a damn great job, Mills.”

“Don't even start on me,” Jody groans, giving Dean's cheek a quick pat, “An entire children's birthday party just came in with food poisoning and guess who's in triage for that hot mess.”

“Oh man,” Dean snickers as he dries his hands with some hand towels, “I'm sorry.”

“Yeah, you better be,” she answers back with a smirk, “You're looking at all seventeen of them after admission.”

“That has got to break some kind of labour law.” Dean mutters under his breath, moving the computer mouse a few times to activate the monitor.

Jody shrugs as she reaches for a new box of thermometer sheaths in an overhead cabinet.

“Somewhere?” Dean asks incredulously, “Anywhere?”

Jody chuckles. “Better move to Canada sometime soon.”

“Hey.” Jody asks suddenly, turning to face Dean. “How are you?”

Dean hits search on the automated patient chart program and clicks on Bed # 2's name. “I'm okay.” he says, keeping his eyes on the monitor.

Jody steps closer and touches his shoulder. “Dean. I need you to not lie to me.”

When Dean's fingers slip away from the mouse and he steps away from the computer, Jody braces herself for anger—an irritated scowl, an offended quip. Rugged stiffness in the way he holds his body, hot air passing aggressively through his nose.

But what she sees is something she could only describe as—peace. Softly dispensed through his eyes and his mouth and the tips of his fingers as he touches the back of his neck. The press of his closed lips against each other tells of a burgeoning smile, not unsaid words being caged behind his teeth. Dean gives Jody a small quirk of the lip, a true one, and says, “I'm okay.”

Jody reaches out and presses a quick kiss on his temple.

“Okay.”

 

 

 

 

 

_“You're awake.” the boy by the bed says in a voice a few octaves lower._

_“Of course I am.” the boy on the bed mutters through dry lips and a misty mask._

_There is hesitance. “How are you feeling?”_

_“Fine. Perfectly fine. Why wouldn't I be?”_

_“Cas,”_

_“There's nothing wrong with me.”_

_The boy by the bed fumbles with his own fingers and chews on his own lip._

_“Okay.”_

 

 

 

 

 

Dean comes rushing into the door—“I'm here! What's wrong, why'd you call—”

He sees what seems like the entire Novak clan waiting for his arrival. He could feel the color draining from his face down to the tips of his toes as Gabriel and Balthazar moves to flank him down from both sides.

“Dean Winchester, my, look how you've grown.” Balthazar grins, grabbing an arm.

“Oh fuck no—”

Gabriel grabs another arm. “We need to talk about your intentions with regards to our brother.”

“My intention is kiss my ass.”

“You, my friend, are talking to the wrong Novak for that one.”

Cas looks up from his sketch. “I have no intention of kissing anybody's ass ever.”

Balthazar's brows hike upwards. “None at all? How do you survive this cruel and capricious world?”

“By being the poor guy with heart failure.”

“That makes so much sense—”  

Gadreel rolls his eyes. “Just bring him in and close the door.”

Dean finally hangs his towel and lets himself be hauled into the room in one massive pull. He glares a dark look of betrayal at Cas who is seated on his bed.

 _Sorry_ , he mouths, grinning cheekily behind his oxygen mask.

 _You're dead to m_ e, Dean grumpily mouths back.

 

 

 

 

 

_“You're awake,” the boy—not quite a boy anymore, but a man—by the bed breathes out, arms spilling from his sides and around his brother's shoulders. “You're awake,” he repeats like it's a feat of magic he couldn't believe._

_The boy—man—on the bed lifts a hand from where it's laid on top of his blanket, and lets his fingers cling onto the fabric of his brother's blood-stained shirt._

_They don't talk about the bandages wrapped around his wrists._

 

 

 

 

 

Art by: [ Yuri Leonov ](http://yurileonov.com/worksprojects_transformation.html)

 

 

 

 

 

Cas wakes up to a little girl wrapping bandages around his wrists.

She looks up at him, and he gives her a small wink. She stands on her tiptoes, plucks his oxygen mask off his nose and mouth, and lets it plop off to the side. She returns to her handiwork.

“She's been making you gauze wristbands for about ten minutes now.” Dean chuckles from where he's plopped on the couch, “She's a perfectionist, I give her that.”

“Hi Lily.” Cas says, voice rough from sleep, his mouth slowly stretching into a comfortable smile.

“Hi,” she answers in a small voice.

“Watcha’ making me?” Cas asks, raising his left hand to make the process easier for her.

“Bracelets,” she mutters sincerely, soft, black eyes peering up at him, “Makes you pretty.”

Cas chuckles, “It does, doesn't it?”

“It's all done now,”

“Well, thank you very much.” Cas says as he struggles to push himself up. He gives up midway and punches on the bed controls instead, raising the head of the bed. “It matches my gown.”

Lily giggles. “You're a princess?”

“Yes,” Cas grins, and then points a finger towards Dean's direction, “You know that guy over there?”

She shakes her head, and Dean feigns sadness.

“That's the evil witch who's out to get me.”

Dean turns to Cas. “Whoa, wait a minute now.”

Cas snickers and Lily giggles into Cas' shoulder, hiding her face beneath the sleeve of his patient gown. Dean watches in amusement as Cas' face flushes pink as he laughs. Some measure of color begins to creep back into his cheeks, just as the tiniest bit of strength cushions the delivery of his words. For a few moments it seems like Cas' heart has grown twice its size and there's actually enough air in his lungs. Dean watches and Dean knows Cas is happy because this is what Cas would give everything and anything for—the slightest semblance of being alive.

“I knew you'd be here,” Phoebe, one of the float nurses working the floor for the past two weeks now, peeks through the slightly ajar door of Cas' room. They always leave it for Lily to slip in. Phoebe smiles at everybody. “Hey Cas, Dean.”

“Come in Phoebs,” Dean calls, and she slips in and closes the door with a snap. She approaches Lily and crouches down to her height.

“Hey sweetie,” she says, giving the girl's cheek a gentle pinch, “You ready for your MRI?”

“That's today?” Cas asks.

“Yup! And it's not even gonna hurt, not one bit.” Phoebe says reassuringly, “Right, Doctor Dean?”

“Easy peasy.” Dean smiles.

Phoebe asks, “You wanna come back now? Let Cassie rest a little?”

Lily responds with a tighter hold around Cas' bandaged wrists. She presses herself closer into the space of his arms. Cas smiles slightly and gives her shoulder a light rub. “Hey, Lily. You know about galaxies, right?”

She sniffs, fingers crumpling against his chest, “Stars?”

“Yes. How many stars do you think there is in a galaxy?”

“I dunno,” she blinks in concentration, “One hundred?”

“There's billions.”

“So many?”

“So, so many. There's billions of stars in a galaxy.” Cas says, tapping his finger against her small fist, “Just like there are millions of little star-like things,” he reaches out and teasingly pokes her forehead, “Right in here.”

“There's little starlings lighting up your mind every time you move your fingers, or walk around the hall, or talk to me or Phoebs. You're like a little galaxy standing in front of me, and I wish I could see you forever and ever.” Cas says, laughing breathlessly, “When you give me a hug, it's like I'm being held by all the stars.”

“I'm gonna miss you so much when I leave this place,” Cas says, sniffing a little, “So is it okay if I get a picture?”

Lily finally nods, “Okay.” Her fingers loosen at his chest.

“Phoebs is gonna help you take that picture with the special camera, okay?” Cas says, giving Phoebe a small, telling look, “That way we get to see all your little stars glowing all nice and bright.”

Phoebe waits until Lily peels herself from Cas' side and holds out a hand for her to take. Lily grabs Phoebe's hand and hops off the stool she's propped up on. _Say bye to for Cassie now_ , and the little girl waves a floppy goodbye as they leave the room.

Cas plops back onto the bed, allows himself a few seconds as he blinks a few times, a breath steady in its escape from his lips. He takes the oxygen mask and aligns it back into place. “I'm gonna nap a little bit.” he tells Dean, “You still okay over there?”

“No, go ahead.” Dean answers, “I've got a few minutes until I have to get back.”

It takes a few moments for Cas to slip into a seemingly easy slumber, and when he finally does, a clicking sound fills the room.

Dean, shifts the recorder from one hand to the other.

 

 

 

 

 

_2hr 52min 12sec_

_2014/09/10.wav_

**_RECORDING FINISHED_ **

 

 

 

 

 

_“Please wake up.”_

_The boy by the bed waits five days, and leaves by the sixth._

_If he waited one day more, he would have seen his brother's eyes open._

 

 

 

 

 

_3hr 34min 32sec_

_2014/09/15.wav_

**_File recording.._ **

 

 

 

 

 

_They wait for a heart, but I don't._

_That, I think, is the value of knowing from the age of twelve years that my body is not designed to hold out against time. Realizing during your first day of soccer practice.._ [ _ **rustling**_ ] _that you just don't breathe the same way the other kids on your team do allows some semblance of clarity. The doctor gives you a list of things you can and can't do—you start all your mornings at seven thirty because seven thirty is when all the pills need to be downed. You take art classes instead of woodwork, because watching and drawing your friends playing soccer is the next best alternative._

[ _ **a pause**_ ]

_By the time I was thirteen years old, I have learned the anatomical names of things kids would just simply call their chest, because when I say my chest hurts, my school nurse doesn't understand that I'm talking about my underdeveloped ventricle, not a bruised rib. [rummaging] By the time I was fourteen, I have watched animations of how the human heart pumps blood throughout the body, because I wanted to know what makes mine so different. By sixteen years of age, I have read journal articles from EBSCO and PubMed about the survival rate of a heart failure patient within a year._

_Many people on the transplant list don't find a match. Or they do find a match, but it's five days too late. Or they find a match just in time, they do the procedure, but their bodies reject it like their cells know 'this one isn't ours; this one is too light—this one doesn't hold the same heartache.'_

_So I don't wait for a heart._

_I wait for my brothers and sisters; Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday for Anna and Gadreel; Saturday and Sunday for Balthazar and Gabriel._

_I wait for the little girl with tired parents in the other room who seems to enjoy my company more than she enjoys the nurses'._

_I wait for the sunrise to pour into my room._

_I wait for Dean._

_People have been telling me for a long time that it's okay to cry, and I agree. But when I do I want it to matter. I want it to make sense. I want it to be when I'm the happiest. It's not going to be in the hope of some other person's heart to replace mine._

_The survival rate of a heart failure patient within a year is twenty four percent._

_So they wait for a heart,_

_But I don't._

 

 

 

 

 

_3hr 55min 28sec_

_2014/09/15.wav_

**_RECORDING FINISHED_ **

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_The boy on the bed wakes up, but doesn't open his eyes._

_“You fucking coward, you goddamn fucking coward—why do you leave him like this? Why do you hide behind work like it's more important than your own brother—fucking why?! Why won't you stay—“_

_The boy wishes he could just fall back asleep._

 

 

 

 

 

One day, there's a knock on his door, and immediately Cas knows who it is.

“Morning.” he greets, an unbearable sort of stiffness lacing intimately with the singular word.

If one listens closely, an aged apology hangs precariously onto the spaces of silence left thereafter.

Cas removes his mask, and time feels so slow, almost like he can draw out the solitary movement into five thousand more.

“Good morning, Michael.”

 

 

 

 

 

_The boy—man—on the bed wakes up to the growing sound of a machine beeping._

_He presses his eyes closed and then forces them open like he usually does. He blinks, acknowledges the familiarity of his surroundings, and lets himself become aware of the oxygen mask fitted against his face. He wiggles his fingers and finds a pulse oximeter clamped onto one of them. The sheets are white. There is a layer of condensation across the interior of his mask. The sun is peeking through his curtains._

_The woman by the bed smiles at him and touches his hair._

_“You're awake.”_

_The man tries to smile._

_“Good morning, Anna.”_

 

 

 

 

 

_ Chapter 8 _

 

 

 

 

 

Art by: [ Adam Lupton ](http://www.alupton.com/art/whats-in-store-for-me-in-the-direction-i-dont-take/)

 

 

 

 

 

Cas smiles.

Cas always smiles. He smiles small, lips together, eyes gentle, breaths soft. He smiles like everything around him is a thing of beauty. He smiles like he knows in every second of every day there is something good forthcoming, if not already happening. He smiles like he knows all those things aren't for him, and that's okay.

“How's work?” he smiles, sitting up.

“Uh,” Michael blinks a couple of times, fingers ticking nervously against each other, like his entire system is running disjointedly beneath his skin, “Good. Busy, but good. How's Madison Park?”

“Good.” Cas answers, “Good food. Thanks for that.”

Michael's eyes flicker to somewhere else in the room before it returns to Cas'. “It's the least I can do, seeing as I couldn't..”

Cas smiles. “Couldn't what?”

“Cas, I haven't been a good brother, I know,” Michael tries to begin and almost immediately Cas jolts into a stop in response. Cas grabs his oxygen mask from where it has toppled off his lap. His grip is shaky against it. “I don't know what you're talking about, you've been sufficient.”

“When you started declining, I couldn't,” Michael tries again, and Cas looks away, “I couldn't watch you die in front of my eyes—”

“I'm watching a play next week. I'm going to need a signed discharge form, so if you could help me out with that, that would be great.”

Michael frowns. “You're stepping out of the hospital? While you're on the waiting list for a heart transplant, are you deluded?”

Cas smiles, fingers working to straighten out the fraying threads sticking out of his mask garter. “The chance of me getting one is next to none. What's the point?”

“Are you kidding me?” Michael laughs, breathless with anger, “Are you fucking kidding me?!”

“I'm dying on my own terms.”

Michael shakes his head, hands trembling. “I'm not signing that release form.”

“I don't understand why not.”

“Because even stepping out of this room will kill you!” Michael indignantly shouts, and then there’s something in Cas’ hands, then something is flying sharply through the air and hits the near wall—

 

 

The harsh sound of glass breaking.

 

 

Water spreads silently and slowly throughout the linoleum, surrounding the pieces of glass like the Pacific does as it embraces the edges of its many islands.

“I'm trying so unbearably hard,” Cas breathes steadily yet shakily, “To not be angry with you. But you make it so, _so difficult_.” His eyes are shut so tight it's like he's almost choking on his own volition.

Michael stands in his place.

“I've forgiven you for leaving me in the hospital when I was twelve so you could get drunk somewhere with your friends. I've long forgotten the anger I felt when you thought that you studying to be a cardiologist was the way to make it up to me.”

Cas lets his eyes flutter open and laughs dryly under his breath.“I've almost forgiven you for ignoring me for the past three years.”

“But then you came back to me.” Cas says with feigned amazement, “Now. On the last leg of the race. Like you've decided on the very last second that your lack of fucking balls was just a smidge weaker than the rising guilt that's threatening to climb past your head.”

Cas laughs bitterly. “And I wish you just let yourself drown.”

His fingers indent mercilessly against his oxygen mask, crumpling it beyond recognition. He hitches a breath or two, but refuses to put the mask back on. “I want you to know how it is not being able to breathe no matter how hard you thrash.”

He continues shakily, “I want you to feel cold at the farthest parts of your body because of impending circulatory shock. I want you to feel what _one hundred thirty fucking heartbeats per arrhythmic minute_ feels like. At least that way you feel the littlest inkling of how I feel when I remember,” he hangs his head back, breathes, “That the same person who carried me on his back and ran me to the nearest hospital when I was ten years old,”

“Is the same fucking person who refused to be assigned my next of kin at eighteen.”

Michael presses a crumpled fist against his lips, his brow furrowed with the urge to cry.

“You,” Cas whispers, unbelieving, “Michael, you, _you_ , when you sent Anna back that form—when you said you couldn't, when she had to call you while I was asleep demanding for an explanation—you killed me, right then and there.”

“This,” he motions to himself helplessly—to his heart monitor, to his oxygen mask, to his catheter bag, to his rows and rows of medication, “This is just the aftermath.”

“Cas,”

“ _Shit_ ,” he says, disbelief punctuating his sorrow,  “How could you?

For a brief few seconds, there is only beeping.

“I'm sorry,”

“You're my brother—and you just—”

Michael moves closer and holds Cas in his arms, “I'm sorry."

“Why would you,”

“I'm so sorry.”

“I'm so sorry.”

Michael breathes like he has never had the opportunity to breathe before, his eyes lost.

“I'm so sorry.”

“I'm sorry.” Michael whispers one last time.

“Fuck you,” Cas mutters,

Cas moves—Michael braces himself for something harsh—but feels a gentle hand over his arm.

(Michael almost remembers blood stains on his shirt and bandages on Cas’ wrists.)

"But I forgive you."

 

 

 

 

 

When Cas wakes up the next day, Michael is seated by his bed.

“You're awake.” he says, the barest hint of a smile settled solemnly at the corners of his lips.

Cas furrows his brow as he looks at the clipboard propped upon Michael's knee. A pen moves back and forth from left to right, the sound of a rotating ball-point intertwining with the vague beeps of Cas' heart monitor.

“What's that?” he mutters, his voice muffled against his newly replaced oxygen mask.

“You're allowed an entire night, from 1600 to 0100, no extensions.” Michael says as he continues writing, “You sign out before you leave, you sign in when you arrive. You're on wheelchair for minimal exertion, and I'm gonna need your vitals every hour.”

“Every hour?” Cas repeats incredulously, hurriedly rubbing the sleep from his eyes, “Hook me up on a mobile heart monitor, why don't you?”

“Don't be ridiculous, that's generous enough.” The pen pauses over the paper. “Who's accompanying you?”

“Dean.” Cas answers, “You know. That emerg doctor you've got on your mental hit list.”

Michael jots something down. “I don't have a mental hit list.”

“Where does Gabriel place?”

There's an oncoming smirk.

“Fifth.”

Cas actually laughs.

Michael unclips the sheet, folds it neatly, and slips it into a crisp envelope. He gives it a few taps before handing it to Cas. “Enjoy your night.”

Cas brings the letter to the light, squinting at the writing inside. He snickers. “Your doctor writing is unbearable. But thank you.” He looks at Michael, arm still holding the letter towards the light.

“You should stay.” he says, motioning towards the television. “A rerun of Green Lantern is coming on in a few minutes.”

Michael makes a face. “Gross.”

“Elitist.”

“It's not elitism, it's simply just that Green Lantern is just a gross movie adaptation all in all.” Michael taps the capped tip of his pen onto his clipboard, smiling. “But okay.”

 

 

 

 

 

_ Chapter 9 _

 

 

 

 

 

Anna knocks on Cas' door and steps in with a smile.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” Cas says breathlessly, but not of the medical emergency sort. He visibly pushes back a splitting grin, his fingers playing at the hem of his jacket.

“You look like you're going to piss your pants in excitement.” Anna points out, “Are you sure about skipping the  adult diaper thing?”

Cas chuckles, biting his lower lip. “I'm good.”

Anna grins teasingly. “We could always slip a piece somewhere.”

“Please no, oh my god.”

“No, really, maybe in your jacket pocket?”

“You're so embarrassing—”

“Nobody's gonna know, it's just gonna be like an over developed pec or something.”

Cas laughs and swats Anna's hands away from his lapels. “I appreciate your concern—or lack thereof—” Anna snickers, “But I am not wearing that, not tonight.”

“Okay, Cinderella.” Anna looks around, “Well, if everything's set—” she checks on the oxygen tank strapped ingeniously onto the back of Cas' wheelchair, “Let's go meet your date.”

“Wait,” Cas says suddenly, holding out a hand and gripping Anna's within the fist that it makes. He looks up at Anna with a look that is rarely on someone as steadfast as Cas. He licks his lips, brow furrowed in almost-frustration.

“I'm nervous.” he says heavily, “I'm really, really nervous.”

“Oh, this is a treat.” Anna laughs, “Look at you, all out of your composure, finally.”

“I appreciate the moral support.”

“I mean, you could be dying and still you'd look like you'd entered another plane of existence entirely.”

“You are a cruel sibling.” Cas sighs, finally releasing his hold onto Anna's fingers.

“It’s a good thing!” Anna grins, “Nervous is good. It means all this still matters as much as it should. You’re excited, and expectant, and frazzled. This is how dates are supposed to be.”

“I forgot.” Cas admits, fingers threading intimately with the hem of his jacket, “‘S'been a long time, you know?”

“You want to relax?” Anna asks as she wheels Cas out of the door and through the halls. They get sweet greetings from the night staff, all of which Cas returns with a grateful thank you. “Just imagine what kind of nervous wreck Winchester must be right now.” They wait in front of the elevator doors, heads tipped back as they watch the numbers dip from seven, to six, to five.

Cas chuckles. “Dean doesn't get into nervous wrecks. Why did you think he became an emerg doctor?”

Anna shrugs. “To make sure he's there when you get rushed in?”

Cas looks back at her, blinking. “What?”

“What?” Anna asks back, and Cas gesticulates quickly.

“What did you just say—to make sure I'm—who told you that?”

“Nobody.” she answers just as the elevator doors slide open, “I just thought it made sense. Medicine, our hospital, emergency. Out of all the available professions, places of residency, and departments. You’re the common denominator.”

Cas' fingers find their way to his lips, where they softly rest.

“You okay?” Anna asks, and Cas nods.

“Yes, of course.”

When they reach the lobby, Dean stands up from where he's seated and almost immediately, Cas remembers the first time he sees him—from afar, back turned, a phone pressed against his ear as sunlight beats against the shirt on his back that warm day in the junkyard.

“Look at you, swapping your mask for nasal prongs.” Dean grins just like he did years and years before, only now he's in a crisply pressed button down and has no use for cranial nerve cheat sheets. “We clean up pretty damn good.”

Cas chuckles knowingly, shaking his head. “Yes we do.”

“Well, you know the conditions,” Anna says with a sigh of finality, both hands squished inside her pockets, “Vitals every hour, to Michael, not to Doctor Sandall. There's a defib in the bag, extra tank of O2 in the trunk. Meds in his pocket. Stethoscope?”

“Anna.” Dean says, smiling, “Everything's ready. He's gonna be fine.”

“Okay.” she answers, shoulders relaxing visibly, “Now, for the sex talk—”

Dean wheels Cas out of there so fast Anna's snickering is but a distant sound in a matter of five seconds flat.

 

 

 

 

 

Art by: [ Maria Garcia-Ibanez ](http://paginademaria.wordpress.com/trabajo/)

 

 

 

 

 

Dean snickers under his breath as he readjusts his grip on the steering wheel.

“Take a picture, it'll last longer.”

Cas blinks a few times—he finds himself staring quite directly at Dean, and when he moves his gaze back to the road ahead, his neck makes a few worrying cricks. He gives the aching spot a good rub. “Don't be too cocky now.”

“I do look good though, right?” Dean grins, and it takes much self preservation for Cas to not wholeheartedly agree, because he does. _He really does_.

“You do.” Cas gives him a small smile to acknowledge the fact, at least. “Can I ask you a question?”

Dean looks at him quickly before his eyes touch back down on the road in front of him.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Why did you choose emergency?”

Dean groans. “Oh come on. You're not gonna make me say it, are you?”

“It's just a simple question,” Cas smiles, “Just answer it as truthfully—”

“Truthfully _my ass_ , you just want an ego boost.”

“Is it so wrong for a dying man to have a little bit more ego?” Cas says in a tone that is distinctly reminiscent of a kicked puppy.

Dean looks at him pointedly. “Maybe a little less will help your soul ascend to the heavens.”

“That,” Cas starts, very impressed, “Was a good dead dig. Not better than mine, but still.”

“Cas, you suggested we sprinkle your ashes in everybody's morning coffee as a part of an elaborate 'I'm inside you' dick joke.” Dean makes a face, “That's just gross, and, as a fucking doctor, can I just say it's also downright breaking maybe five hundred different health codes.”

“Five hundred? Really?” Cas grins, holding back a laugh, “You are a dramatic man, Dean Winchester. A dramatic, selfless, ridiculous man.” He shakes his head and props it against one hand. “Why I deserve you, I'll never know.”

Dean places the car on neutral as they hit a part of the road where it is mostly motionless. He pauses for a while, fingers of one hand grazing his chin, before he goes on. “You really want to know?”

“Yes.” Cas says, resting his head against the seat’s headrest.

Dean’s fingers grip nervously against the clutch. “I chose emerg so I can ready myself for the time that you'd come in. I chose it so that I can make sure I'd be the first set of hands.”

“So I can make sure nobody's gonna fucking give up on you just because of a five-second flat line.” he says.

The traffic eases quite a bit, and Cas feels the car move forward.

Dean shrugs slightly, as if the words from his mouth are the most obvious thing in the world. “Because if there's someone who has to send one hundred fifty joules of electricity through your body, or break your ribs as a result of continuous CPR—I'd rather it be me.”

They take a left, and then another.

“I know I can't save you, because you can't save you. But I'd rather be right here anyway. Just because you're dying doesn't mean you've got to do it alone. I want to be here. I choose to be here.”

Dean looks at Cas in ways no proud man ever should. “That's why you deserve me. Because in return, I deserve you.”

Cas takes every word and keeps it within his chest. He selfishly takes everything until it has no option but to overflow, a rush of water pouring past the basin of its shores—because it's simply too much love for such a little, dying heart to hold.

“Dramatic enough for you?” Dean asks, and Cas laughs with eyes closed.

“Here we go.” Cas realizes they've pulled up to Walter Kerr Theatre's parking area. “You ready?”

He smiles, contentedly, happily, (readily).

“Yes.”

 

 

 

 

 

Art by:[ Maria Garcia-Ibanez](http://paginademaria.wordpress.com/trabajo/)

 

 

 

 

 

“So, what's that for?” The man to their right asks, motioning to the oxygen tank placed along the side of Cas' aisle seat, “I figured I should at least know what I'm stubbing my foot into every time I try to squeeze into my row.”  He barks a laugh, which riles something deep within Dean's chest.

Cas smiles politely. “Heart disease.”

The man gives Cas a head to toe glance, brow raised suspiciously. “You don't look like you've got a blocked artery.”

“It's congenital.” Cas explains with a patience of an aged tree, something Dean simply does not have. His fingers tap a disgruntled beat against his seat's arm rest as he mumbles, “That means from birth.”

“Pardon?”

Dean cracks a tight-lipped smile, fingers still tapping. “Nothing.”

The man leans towards them, elbows propped against his arm rest as a serious expression dawns over his face. “How's the prognosis?”

Cas blinks. “Uh."

“It must be hard being in such an obstacle-ridden relationship and still having to deal with something like this.” The man's looking at Dean now and it's funny how he doesn't feel the waves of displeasure emanating from Dean's very core, “I feel for you.” he actually tells Dean, “That is just so brave.”

Dean looks like a thousand miniature bombs just exploded in front of his face and Cas tries to hide his laugh beneath one hand. Dean so blatantly arranges himself so that he can look the man in the eye and says as solemnly as he can, “Number one, the prognosis is fuck you.”

Cas chokes on his own spit, probably, and the man who receives the words just looks mildly surprised.

“Number two, oh, you raised your honorary I-support-queers card, _shit_ , congratulations, go fuck yourself with it. And number three, you wish I was brave, _him_ , Cas, he's brave. He's dealing with his shit; I'm a fucking tag-along. You don't get to feel for us, you don't get to clap in the background when we kiss just because he's got tubes up his nose, him being sick isn't a fucking sideshow so walk the fuck on and go look at the rest of the fucking Anne Frank exhibit!”

They reel in the attention of the thin amount of people currently inside the theater.

“Holy shit.” Dean says, shaking his head in disbelief. He looks at Cas. “You get this a lot? No wonder you get all riled up and arrhythmic every other day. _Shit_.”

Cas grins cheekily, and Dean furrows his brow in intertwined confusion and suspicion. “Why do you look like that?” Dean turns to the man on their right, who looks about seventy percent less of an asshole already.

“I heard you were good.” the man says politely, his voice a different intonation no less, “Just had to see it for myself.”

Dean frowns. “I'm really missing something here.”

“Your brother has been telling me all about you. Maybe—if you have some off time, of course—you can drop by an improv class or two.”

“Shit.” Dean groans into his hands, “You're the playwright.”

“Simon Carnegie.” he nods in acknowledgement, “It's a pleasure to meet you both.”

Dean peers from behind his hands, frowning. “You're an asshole, you know? How is riling me up about personal things any indication of how good I could be in theatre?”

Simon smiles apologetically. “I’m terribly sorry. I just wanted to see so badly. Emotion sits differently on each person's shoulders. Sometimes it changes the voice of a person, sometimes it crumples it into nothing but an inhale and an exhale. Some people close their eyes in anger. And some stare the person straight in the eye and says 'fuck you'.” He grins teasingly to which Dean responds with an embarrassed cringe.

Simon rises from his seat. “I really do apologize.” he says gently,  “The offer stands until whenever.” He slips out of their row and jokingly stubs his foot against Cas' tank before climbing up the stage and disappearing behind the curtains.

“Shit.” Dean mumbles, shaking his head, “I knew there was something off. That was a lot of offensive things in one sentence, too much, almost.”

Cas is visibly trying to hold back a laugh. “You okay?”

“You don't get to talk.”

“Do you need an icepack or something?”

“I don't speak to traitors.” Dean morosely says from behind the hand that covers his eyes.

Cas peers into Dean's eyes and teasingly asks, “Your heart okay? You look like you're having an episode. I could take you to the hospital—you can just lie on my lap and I can wheel us there.”

Dean bites his lip.

“Like Pietà, except you're not half naked and I'm not the virgin Mary.”

Dean bursts out laughing. “You dick.”

“We can talk about your strong feelings about John Green novels on our way there.”

“Shut up, I saw the movie, barely.”

“Bet you cried.”

“You bet your ass I did.” Dean grumbles, and Cas collapses into a fit of laughter.

Cas settles down into a smile and takes Dean's hand. “That was incredibly heart-warming though.”

Dean scowls, but holds onto it gratefully, nonetheless.

“Yeah, yeah.”

 

 

 

 

 

_**(1) MESSAGE SENT** _

_TO: Michael Novak_

_1800_

_**T:** 36.7 C_

_**PR:** 61 beats per min_

_**RR:** 15 respirations per min_

_**BP:** 105/75 mmHg_

_just so you know this is dumb and embarrassing_

_for everybody involved in this entire stupid thing_

_i'm a doctor for shit's sake_

_i know bad looking vitals_

 

_**(1) MESSAGE SENT** _

_TO: Michael Novak_

_1900_

_**T:** 36.7 C_

_**PR:** 65 bmp_

_**RR:** 12 rmp_

_**BP:** 110/70 mmHg_

_THE BLOOD PRESSURE MACHINE YOU'RE MAKING US USE_

_IS MAKING THIS STUPID BEEPING SOUND_

_I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY NOW_

 

_**(1) MESSAGE SENT** _

_TO: Michael Novak_

_2000_

_**T:** 36.4 C_

_**PR:** 58 bmp_

_**RR:** 12 rmp_

_**BP:** 105/75 mmHg_

_just in case—DON'T FREAK OUT—i'm amping up his_

_O2 flow rate to 5L/min_

_they switched his mask for a cannula for tonight; may have changed his breathing pattern_

 

_**(1) MESSAGE SENT** _

_TO: Michael Novak_

_2100_

_**T:** 36.7 C_

_**PR:** 65 bmp_

_**RR:** 14 rmp_

_**BP:** 110/75 mmHg_

_do you trust me now??_

 

_(1) MESSAGE SENT_

_TO: Michael Novak_

_2200_

_**T:** 36.7 C_

_**PR:** 64 bmp_

_**RR:** 14 rmp_

_**BP:** 110/75 mmHg_

_this play is awesome and it gives me great joy that cas is here to watch it too_

 

_**(1) MESSAGE SENT** _

_TO: Michael Novak_

_2300_

_**T:** 36.6 C_

_**PR:** 65 bmp_

_**RR:** 15 rmp_

_**BP:** 110/75 mmHg_

_you did a great thing by letting cas go tonight_

 

_**(1) MESSAGE RECEIVED** _

_FROM: Michael Novak_

_Is he happy?_

 

Dean looks to his left. He swears he could see galaxies twinkling in Cas' eyes, and stardust slipping in the form of laughter from his lips.

 

_**(1) MESSAGE SENT** _

_TO: Michael Novak_

_Yes._

 

 

 

 

 

Art by: [ Kate MacDowell ](http://www.katemacdowell.com/)

 

 

 

 

 

“Do it.”

“You can't make me. I won't, I refuse,”

“You call yourself a man of the arts?!” Jo asks incredulously.

Sam raises a finger. “You're really loud, you're so, _so loud_..”

“Well, are you not?” Cas asks, grinning.

“A man of the arts? Hell yeah I am.. That play was so on point,” Sam takes another swig of his beer, “I was so on point... right?”

Cas nods, squashing his laughter by pressing his lips against Dean's shoulder. “Devastatingly so.”

Jo gesticulates. “Then go do it.”

Sam sways in his seat for a little bit, the warm breeze sweeping his hair around and beating his jacket against his back. Without preamble he shoots out of his seat, marches up to the rooftop edge, and shouts into the streets below, “DICKS AND BALLS,”

He slides down against the wall and curls against the floor.

“ _Christ_ ,” Cas breathes out, one hand hiding his splitting grin.

Jo breaks down laughing, one hand holding onto her chair in an attempt to keep her balance. “I told you,” she wheezes, “Anything. Anything. As long as you tell him it's to prove that he's a man of the arts, and also as long as he's drunk out of his wits.”

“How the hell did this information even get to you?” Dean snorts.

“You keep forgetting I have an entire arsenal of blackmail material that is completely at my disposal.” Jo says, wiping tears from her eyes. “Speaking of which,” She pats around for her bag until her fingers can hook themselves around the handles. She produces a magazine from within it and tosses it onto Cas' lap.

“No,” Cas breathes out in disbelief.

“NO,” Dean yells, horrified.

“YES,” Sam gurgles out from afar.

Jo snickers as Cas stares down in reverence at the cover before him. “Advanced Merry Christmas, Castiel Novak.”

“Dean,” Cas asks, “Topless, Dean? With a cowboy hat?”

Cas laughs—so, so happily like he's seen the best thing he could ever see in this lifetime and the next.

Dean looks at Cas, shakes his head, and chuckles.

“It was a warm day.” he admits.

 

 

 

 

 

They arrive home at quarter to one.

 

 

 

 

 

Dean wheels Cas back into his room, closes the door, and helps him out of the chair and onto the bed. He heads for the far end of the room and returns with a patient gown stowed away inside one of Cas' cabinets. Cas looks down at the folded, medical-green fabric transferred from Dean's hands to his, a wistful exhale punctuating his small smile. He disjointedly shrugs off his jacket and works on unbuttoning his shirt.

“Don't.” Dean says softly, and Cas looks up. “Just—fuck this.” he takes the patient gown and tosses it onto the couch, “Wearing your own clothes for a night won't make a fucking medical anomaly of you.”

Dean looks at Cas like he wants vivid eternities, but in his hands are few remaining days. “Just—please,”

“Dean.”

“Why should you be in clothing that marks you down as sick and weak?”

Cas looks at Dean gently. “Because I am.”

Dean shakes his head slightly, eyes closed, and lets the words escape into the open. “I wish you weren't.”

“Dean, me too.” Cas breathlessly says around a soft laugh, unraveling his fingers and holding both hands out—cold, bluish-tipped hands, presenting them in front of him as if within his palms is all his desperation, flowing little rivers trickling down his arms. He shakes his head. “I don't want to die,”

“I don't want half a heart, I want the biggest one in this universe."

“I don't want to breathe deeply,” Cas _begs_ , “I don't want to breathe like I'm heaving as much oxygen into my body as I possibly can.”

“I want to breathe and be able to forget that I'm breathing.”

“I want to be able to talk to you without an oxygen mask on,” He looks down at his hands—his shaking, cold hands,

“I want so much to breathe lightly,” Cas looks at Dean's eyes, and then weakly laughs,  “And _god dammit_ for the first time in my life you've made me feel I could.”

Dean presses a hand against his lips because he can feel the ugliness of it all—he feels the awful urge to cry as loudly and painfully as he ever could. He can feel his body rebel against his control; _let me go, let me sob into my hands, let me yell at the sky so this searing pain can dissipate into the atmosphere like it was never anything but air_. Dean is nothing but quivering lips and rigid limbs, nothing but sorrow setting heavy. Cas holds Dean's hands in his, cold and unapologetic, and Dean clings to Cas the way Cas clings to Dean. They cling to each other like fingers clasped fervently; _don't go_ ,

_Don't go,_

_Don't go._

“You've made me so very happy.” Cas softly says with all the sincerity every little part of his little heart could hold, “So, so happy, Dean Winchester.”

There are tears in his eyes.

Finally, Cas cries.

 

 

 

 

 

Art by: [ Kate Macdowell ](http://www.katemacdowell.com/)

 

 

 

 

 

_ Chapter 10 _

 

 

 

 

 

_“Here’s to the hundred hellos we skipped over_

_Here’s to the thousand goodbyes we chose to spare_

_Here’s to the million ‘I need you’s I should have whispered an infinite more times_

_And here—here’s to the one ‘I love you’ I never got to say.”_

_\- n.t._

 

 

 

 

 

Mourning, at most times, is floating.

 There is a fair amount of aimless walking, bare feet padding softly onto wooden floors, hands tinkering objects around, adjusting them in the most minimal of ways. There is no purpose to this. You sit yourself down and tell yourself, there should be tears shed sometime at this point—loss demands grief, but it's like none of the pathways in your brain are connected and there is just radio silence. There is a balloon of lightness in your chest that you know is false, and the rest of the day is spent waiting for it to pop.

 You take the three day bereavement leave.

 You lay in your bed.

 You clean up.

 You walk around the house.

 You try to do chores.

 It's just floating.

 Mindless, breathless floating.

 Until gravity works its wonders and crumples you to the ground.

 The balloon pops.

 Mourning is now grieving.

 

 

 

 

 

Dean wakes up.

 

 

 

 

 

The difficult part is that he understands.

He understands that a failing Fontan Procedure is a dire prognosis. He understands that a singularly functional right ventricle cannot support systemic circulation in the long run. He understands that the heart transplant process is a hit or miss. He understands that a little, gentle heart could only handle so much cardiac arrhythmias in its entire lifetime.

Dean wishes he did not know all of these things. He wants to ask _WHY, WHY NOW, WHY THIS WAY, WHY HIM_ and ask all the damn questions despite knowing there will never be any answers. When pain is unbearable, ignorance is a blessing. There is comfort in having no answers and destroying things with his hands and screaming until his throat grows far too sore to go any louder. He’d rather be swept away with torrid anger and see so much red that he momentarily forgets—than sit down with this steady hum of continuous ache and constantly remember.

To understand is to accept.

To accept is to grieve in silence.

Dean doesn’t want silence.

He wants music in his ears and laughter so vivid it draws lines around his eyes.

(The first day out of three passes.)

 

 

 

 

 

_So, how are you?_

_Fine. Trying. Damn difficult, though._

_Jo says she misses you._

_**Chuckle**. Fuck her, she misses my cooking, not me._

_Same difference. Glad you still know how to laugh._

_I’m in mourning, not dead._

_**Snicker**. Too early, don’t you think? Cas will haunt your ass for that._

_**Sound of sheets ruffling** —Bring it— **yawn** —he’s a sucker for me and I miss him._

_We should go out for a drink sometime before you go back to work; you know, talk a little._

_Can’t. Helping to move Cas’ stuff out of his place and into Anna’s._

_Next time, then._

_You bet._

_Dean. If you need me,_

_I know Sammy. I know._

 

 

 

 

 

“Christ christ christ DON’T MOVE! I’ll move!”

Dean grunts against the surface of the dresser they’re hauling up the stairs. “Goddammit, Anna.”

Anna wails from her spot five steps above.“You can’t just push on when I haven’t moved yet, you’re gonna tip this thing over and squash me with it!”

“You know,” Dean says as Anna takes three steps up in anticipation, “There’s actual people you could actually hire to actually do this shit for you.”

“This is Cas’ stuff, okay,” Anna huffs as she adjusts her stance, “I don’t want people banging it around against staircases.”

“Hard to believe with how many time’s you’ve dropped your end of the furniture.” Dean grumbles and heaves at the same time.

“What did you say, I didn’t hear you!”

“Call somebody and cut your losses!”

“NO—”

—Dean and Anna stand at the top of the staircase, watching as the workers strap the dresser onto an appliance dolly. Anna tries to look as accomplished as she could. “You know what, we tried.” she decides to say, taking a swig from her beer. Dean snickers, shaking his head as he tips his bottle back as well.

“What did you do yesterday?” Anna asks, and Dean shrugs.

“Sleep. Rest.” he gulps down about half of his beer, “Was tired the entire day.”

Anna puffs her cheek out and exhales steadily. She shrugs half-heartedly. “I cried a lot. Couldn’t even open my eyes after the third bout.” She looks at Dean inquiringly. “Did you? Cry, I mean.”

Dean taps a finger against his bottle. “No.”

“If you want to, you should.” Anna murmurs, mouth against the lip of her bottle. “The human body’s sixty percent water for shit’s sake, you’ve got some fluidity to spare.”

“I don’t think he’d want me to.”

“Who cares?” Anna says, stepping a few steps away to make way for the workers wheeling the dresser through her door, “It’s not like he’s got it jotted down on his will. Go do what you want.”

Cas’ last will and testament is a list of things.

 

 

                                                     1. To Anna Milton; keep my belongings. It’s about time you returned the favor. I love

                                                     you so, so much, my sister.

 

 

Dean looks at her. “Sixty percent water. Sounds like something he’d say.”

“Because it is.” She rests herself against the wall behind her.

“From the moment he was born he’s been different. Dusky colored, silent, half a heart—I didn’t know something so new could look so tired.” Anna smiles slightly, “He’s been tired for so long. Now he isn’t. That merits something to celebrate about.”

 

 

                                                     2. To my brothers, Gabriel, Balthazar, Gadreel, and Michael; scatter part of my ashes along Fort Tilden

                                                     Beach, so I can stay close to the water, but close to home. Take a seedling with part of me imbued

                                                     within its soil and plant it in Central Park, so I can continue to grow even if my body cannot. Take part of

                                                     me to the Hudson River; let it bring me to the North Atlantic Ocean, so I can travel to the places I know I

                                                     never could.

 

 

“To Cas,” Anna raises her bottle.

 

 

                                                     3. To Lily Shead; I leave all my monetary possessions, including my share of the Novak estate in the hope

                                                     that it will help continue her radiation therapy.

 

 

Dean raises his bottle.

“To Cas.”

 

 

                                                     4. To Dean Winchester; the Metropolitan Museum on the 17th of October.

 

 

(The second day out of three passes.)

 

 

 

 

 

Dean looks at his phone that night.

_16th of October._

He turns away and lies on his bed.

 

 

 

 

 

At 7 o’clock in the evening, the next day: Arcs.

The Metropolitan Museum of Arts is punctuated with rising columns, domed ceilings, and arcs.

Dean feels like he’s a block out of proper proportion, jutting out of a cleanly-laden, brick wall, as he walks past the entrance and into the vast space. He is so used to curtains drawn around stretcher beds and precisely positioned supply cabinets that it’s difficult to set himself at ease in a place so intricately spread out. He looks around and sees marble in the form of statues and pedestals; he tips his head back and sees a glass paneled ceiling almost as distant as the night sky. There’s so much space if not too much, the nearest person he could find is ten feet away, and whispers echo into the air like nothing in this place is to be kept to himself—he finds his fingers splayed into his pockets, where they restlessly pick at the loose threads of his slacks.

_Shit._

Dean puffs a forceful exhale and walks forward. _You’re an ER doctor for fuck’s sake._

He finally purchases his ticket and heads for the first entrance he can find.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes, during the unforgiving hours of two o’clock in the morning and onwards, Dean softly, unforgivingly, decides he wants to forget.

 

 

(Dean releases a hand from his pocket and wipes it tiredly against his chin.)

 

 

The human brain, Dean realizes, is a cruel, capricious thing. It will not give you want you want. It is decisive, definitive. Hold a brain with in your hands and you hold against your fingers a person’s entire life—their personality, their memories, every single bodily function from the sway of their gait to the expansion of their lungs. Your birthday’s in two months, this is how you get the square root of 144, breathe, place your hands in front of you you’re about to fall. It is unyielding in its control. Eighty-six billion neurons microscopically scintillating beneath a cage of bone, all of which are designed to remember.

 

 

(He looks at a painting. He sees blue seas and sandy beaches. He closes his eyes.)

 

 

Dean doesn’t want to remember.

 

 

(He takes a few steps back and slightly turns away, chest heaving up, down, up down.)

 

 

But every cell of him doesn’t want to forget.

 

 

( _To Dean Winchester: go to the Metropolitan Museum on the 18th of October._ )

 

 

And this is indeed the cruelty of the human anatomy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He follows the trail of people until the gallery spills into a wide expanse of floor, one wall comprised of nothing but framed glass panels that soar up and forms a corner with an equally glass-constituted ceiling. There are sculptures erected sporadically along the floor space, like a loosely arranged chess game of great proportions. Dean looks up at one of them, eyes trailing the intricate lines of muscle along the sculpture’s calf.

“You look like them,” a small voice says, and Dean immediately sees a little boy trying to hoist himself up the pedestal with his clumsy arms.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Dean sputters as he spills forward, hands hoisting the kid off the sharp corners and bringing him back onto flat footing, “Great idea, wrong place, kid.”

“I’m not scared though,” the kid whines and almost-cries at the same time. Dean brings himself to one knee.

“I know.” Dean says cozily, “Bet you’re the bravest kid in your class, aren’t you?”

“No,” the boy says comfortably, “Emily is. She’s great.”

Dean almost fights back a happy grin.

The boy points to the statue again. “You look like him.” He pokes a finger at Dean’s face. “Right here.”

Dean looks up. “Thanks, that’s a real nice thing to say.” He looks around for any wailing mothers or a class of kindergartners. “Where are your friends?”

“Somewhere,” he answers, then asks curiously, “Where are your friends?”

“Came here alone.” Dean answers with a happy voice, “You don’t think I’m a loser, do you?”

The boy shakes his head nonchalantly. “If you’re not here to play with your friends, then why’re you here?”

Dean pauses. “I don’t know. I’m still trying to find out, actually.”

“Eric!” A woman scurries to the little boy’s side, her flower printed skirt erratically brushing against her ankles. “You don’t leave the group without permission! You were supposed to be holding Larry’s hand when we were walking—”

“Larry’s hand is sweaty though!” Eric complains. _Eric that’s very rude_ , the woman says in a hushed voice, and Dean tries his best not to laugh.

The woman sighs and looks at Dean. “I’m sorry if he inconvenienced you in any way.”

“It’s alright.” Dean says, smiling. “He’s been good. Class trip?”

The woman grins sheepishly. “Second stop. First was a candy factory.”

Dean whistles a dying tune. “Explains all the energy.”

“Hey! Hey!” Eric calls repeatedly, jumping on the balls of his feet, “Here,” He fumbles inside the little packet hanging at the end of his Met Museum ID lace. He hands Dean a map.

Dean unfolds the map once, and then twice.

“Find what you’re looking for, mister!” Eric waves as he is whisked away.

Dean smiles gently, waving back.

He stands up, holds the map by the top corners, and lets it fall open.

A little area is circled with a red marker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

( _“You gotta tell me at least one thing about October 17.”_

 _“Just be at the Uris Center at the Met by 9 o’clock.”_ )

 

 

 

 

 

Dean walks up to the entrance and reads: _New Blood, An Exhibition of New York’s Finest New Artists._

He tentatively walks towards the roped off doorway and awkwardly looks around. He unfolds his slightly used map, a finger tracing his path from The Greek Arts department and dots a finger against the encircled Uris Center. This should be it. Unless Anna fucked up—

“Dean Winchester?” Somebody from the other side of the rope calmly calls out, and the voice pulls Dean into an almost anxious walk forward.

“Yeah, I’m he, me,” Dean restarts, cringing, “That’s me.”

The lady in a nice jacket and pencil skirt chuckles. “I’m Jackie, Anna’s assistant curator. Are you okay? Do you need a minute?”

Dean laughs, softly embarrassed. “I’m good.” The lady starts unhooking the rope from one of the standees when Dean looks to their left, right at the sign propped up on a stand. “Can you tell me more about this exhibition?”

Jackie steps to the side and allows Dean to pass before hooking the rope back to its metal ring. “The Met, for so long, focused on acquiring historically valuable pieces and showcasing them to patrons of this establishment. Anna really fought for the development of a department that allowed the museum to support new artists and the unique, novel work sending ripples throughout the younger facets of the art scene. This exhibition is the starting point of that.”

She leads Dean past paintings propped up on short columns, statues on stable stands, framed photographs of minimal content, yet at the same time, teeming with so much meaning. “New Blood is a fifty-piece art show involving fifty of New York’s finest new artists, all of them masters of different mediums.”

“Where’s everybody else?” Dean asks, and Jackie looks at him knowingly.

She taps a finger at the flyer she has in one hand, right on the date. Opening night: October 18th.

“.. I’m here a day early.” Dean says slowly, “I have no idea what’s going on right now.”

Jackie only smiles. “The only reason why you’re here, truly, is for this.”

They stop in front of a white, angular pedestal. Dean brings a hand up to his mouth and covers it, slowly, gently.

The recorder sits on the white, pristine surface, a small placard tacked right next to it.

 

 

_To my first love, and my last_

_Artist: Castiel Novak_

_Medium: Sound_

 

_Artist Comments:_

_Press play_.

 

 

“You get to listen first.” Jackie says, and with that, she politely walks away.

Dean’s eyes fall onto the pedestal.

With his free hand, he presses play.

 

 

_Hello, Dean._

 

 

 

 

 

_5hr 41min 12sec_

_2014/10/10.wav_

**_File playing.._ **

 

 

 

 

 

_If you are listening to this at the 17th of October, then I know everything I told Anna has gone to plan. It means this message, the first to be heard and the last to be recorded, is given to you. By the time this draws to a stop, every person who comes up to this pedestal and presses play will hear a different recording. It will never be this. This is for you._

 

_Dean, I think this is truly it._

 

_I can see everything dwindle into smallness. I can feel a pull on my wrist, and there is a whisper of something forthcoming that is suspended overhead. I know what is about to come, so I watch you softly as you sleep instead, counting the rise and fall of your chest in my mind._

 

_I stopped counting at 201._

 

_Dean, to look at you is to look at all I will lose and all I will leave behind, and I am agonized by the thought. When I die, I am to be cheated of you. You have made me want lazy, fruitless Sundays. You’ve made me want sand underneath my feet and the ocean surrounding my knees. You’ve made me want things so much that I feel selfish; a sick little boy who has accepted the end of his story, but still bargaining for more time. Kubler-Ross must be spinning in his grave._

 

_Dean._

 

_Dean._

 

**_Dean._ **

_I miss you terribly already, and I am still here._

_I want to say your name over and over again so I can carry it over to wherever I’m going in the afterlife. If I am to cross the river Styx, I’ll whisper your name and the ferryman will take it, for it is worth all the gold in the world. I will leave this world a selfish man, for I will keep within myself all the pieces of you my dying heart could hold. I feel like there is so much I must tell you, yet I could not find my way out of the woods._

_So, to my first love, and my last, Dean Winchester._

 

 

 

(Dean closes his eyes and presses a hand against his lips.)

 

 

 

_These are the things I want to tell you._

_The human body is 60% water._

_The number of neurons in one person is the rough equivalent of the number of stars in a small galaxy._

_There is 0.2 milligrams of gold in your blood, the heart is an elaborate engine—_

 

 

 

 

 

_I love you._

 

(Dean breathes out.)

 

 

 

_And to the person who you will love in the future;_

 

_Love him infinitely more than I was able to._

 

 

 

 

 

_5hr 55min 59sec_

_2014/10/10.wav_

**_PLAYBACK FINISHED_ **

 

 

 

 

 

Dean shuts his apartment door.

He fishes out his phone and types in a message.

 

 

 

**_(1) MESSAGE SENT_ **

_TO: Sam_

_Come here now_

 

 

  
When Sam knocks onto Dean’s door, he hears it’s open.

When he steps into the apartment, he finds Dean seated on the couch, fingers threaded together, elbows propped against his knees. His back is a weak, heavy slope, the slump of his shoulders sorrowful.

Sam sits next to Dean.

“Can we talk?” Dean asks.

Sam looks at his brother softly. “Of course.”

Dean reaches out and wipes the tears from his eyes.

(The third out of the three days passes.)

 

 

 

 

 

_ Prologue _

 

 

 

 

 

_My love, my dear true love—_

_The earth took pity on me for it saw that I cannot be without you,_

_So she gives you back in forms she could fathom._

_My love, you float around me the way dust seemingly dances in the presence of sunlight._

_You hold me the way the first snowfall blankets a sullen city._

_You come to me the way rivers find it’s way back to the sea._

_So I stand by my window and welcome the rain._

_Everything is teeming with you._

_And it’s like you were never gone._

_-n.t._

 

 

 

 

 

“It’s not that I find you scary,” Jody frantically looks at Dean for support, but he waves her off.

“Don’t you put this on me now.” Dean says, smirking at the electronic chart he’s scrolling through.

“Well, then what?” Dr. Adamson—Cain—demands almost impatiently, so usual of older emergency room doctors. “Tell me.”

Jody cringes and tries to not hide behind a resuscitation cart. “It’s just, you’re intimidating.”

“She secretly shits her pants whenever you’re on the clock.” Dean quips and gets a smack at the back of the head.

Cain raises a brow.

“Are you mad? Are you gonna write me up?” Jody asks cautiously.

A corner of his lip twitches. “I agree, actually.”

Jody groans with  relief. “Jesus Christ..” She looks at him exasperatedly. “Why are you asking, anyway?”

Cain leans an elbow against the counter. “I may or may not have made a med student cry today.”

“For shame, Doctor.” Dean mutters as he squints at the CT scan results he has opened before him. “That looks like a mild subarachnoid hemorrhage, doesn’t it?”

Cain draws his face closer to the monitor. “I can see a really slight shift of brain tissue right there.”

Dean nods slightly, tapping his lower lip. “I’ll queue him up for an MRI.”

“He’s on vitals and neuro checks every two hours, and so far he’s been okay.” Jody says, flipping through her schedule sheet. “Something I should be doing right now, actually. I’ll be back.”

Jody grabs her a penlight from a drawer and walks towards one of the curtained bed.

“I can help you deal with your cryer, you know.” Dean grins, “I’m good with conversation. Students think I’m great.”

“Careful.” Cain warns, motioning towards his head, “You’re starting to tip over.”

Dean shrugs, “Just take a few of my shifts. I’m visiting Cas tomorrow and it’s a damn four hour drive to Coudersport.”

“Does seniority not mean anything to anyone anymore?” Cain asks, rolling his eyes.

Dean smirks. “Nah.”

Cain sighs. “I wouldn’t have signed up as a preceptor if I knew helping you foolish kids be proper doctors would amount to this. Remember when I made you cry your first year here?”

“Excuse you, old man,” Dean laughs, “I didn’t cry, it was bad sinus infection. Those were the tears of a sick, suffering young man working through a twelve hour shift while on benadryl.”

Cain smirks. “No, those were the tears of a year one med student who broke his sterile field on first try.”

Dean laughs even more. “You are such a damn liar.”

Cain looks at Dean. “There’s one specific thing I remember best from you for the first two years.”

“Yeah?” Dean settles into a smile, intrigued. “What?”

“The way you have that almost shattered look on your face whenever paramedics would wheel in a patient, and they would say ‘patient suffering heart failure’.” Cain says gently, “I couldn’t forget. Years and years of being a preceptor, and here comes one med student who could splendidly handle every single pathophysiology in the book, but never quite does the same when it comes to the heart.”

“And now?”

Cain smiles. “Better. So much better.”

“Hate to say it,” Dean says, “But I learned from the best.”

Cain nudges him at the shoulder and scrolls through the patient list. “Take the weekend off and see Castiel.” he says, “Go before I change my mind.”

Dean presses his lips together, the corners lifting genuinely. “Thank you. I mean it.”

He is halfway through the door when Cain turns to him.

“And I know I’ve never actually said it out loud,” he says over his shoulder, “But I’m proud of you, Dean.”

 

 

 

 

 

Dean, everytime he drops by Cinema Cafe for a cup of coffee, buys alongside it a bottle of orange juice.

Dana Han, with her paint speckled apron and her loosely tied hair, doesn’t say anything.

She starts on a new painting instead, and she uses all the brilliant hues of blue in her palette.

 

 

 

 

 

Dean realizes, as he sits on the hood of the Impala with a cup of coffee in one hand, that the heart is an amazing thing.

_Coudersport, Pennsylvania._

The heart is the only muscle in the body completely embraced by bone. A heart the size of a mere fist keeps alive a body around eighty times its size. A person can completely injure their spinal cord at the neck and have all their muscles paralyzed completely—but the heart, the hardworking, patient, _gentle heart_ —will not stop. It will try to save you when you’re dying. It will beat in all the seconds and split-seconds that consists your ninety years of life. The cells of ones’ heart will age just as slow as a man does, and by the time he is eighty, he will place a hand against his chest and he will be greeted, truly, by an old friend.

 

 

When Cas died, he did so with a hand on his heart, and a _thank you_ leaving his lips.

 

 

Dean looks up at the sky, and sees the stars.

A month has passed and everything that is aching starts to be more forgiving, but there are no words to describe how much Dean misses Cas. When he sits alone in his apartment with nothing but the space in his mind, he is filled with everything that is him. Listening to someone’s heart beat through his stethoscope is like listening to Beethoven and Mozart, as if Cas is by his side placing the records onto the player, listening to the symphonies as he paints. Whenever Dean comes to visit Lily, he finds Cas’ smile in on her lips. He breathes in the chilly, early winter breeze as if somewhere in the atmosphere are the remnants of Cas’ entirety, and he selfishly wants every bit of it.

The only thing that saves him from the thoughts of how much he misses Cas, are the thoughts of how much he loves him.

Dean loves Cas.

So, so much.

He loves him so much he is bursting of it.

He loves him so much that the thought of him makes him fall into silence.

He loves him the way a dying earth still looks up at a dead moon.

Dean looks up at the stars, smiling wistfully.

“To my dear true love, Castiel Novak.” he softly says to the sky, “These are the things I want to show you.”

He slips out his phone and turns on his camera, and moves it towards the cup of coffee he has in one hand.

“The coffee you wanted to drink is particularly good tonight.”

He moves it to his left. “The mountains you wanted to climb are beautiful during the day.”

He raises it above his head. “And the stars you wanted to see are reminiscent of you.”

At four o’clock in the morning, Dean breathes out a threatening sob, breaking it into splintering pieces.

“I love you so much, Cas.” 

He closes his eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

And in that moment, in the first of his five hundred lives with the man he loves, with galaxies in his head and gold in his blood—

 

 

 

 

 

Dean breathes lightly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Fig. 5 An accompanying mix._ [Listen](http://8tracks.com/bentobride/breathe-lightly)

 

 

_Fig. 6-7 Accompanying artworks by[Cloud](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2639816)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My unending gratitude to Fea ([hamburgerjummy](http://hamburgerjimmy.tumblr.com/)) who lent her time to beta read this piece, and to Cloud ([cloudsiteration](http://cloudsiterations.tumblr.com/), who trusted on Breathe Lightly enough to be willing to make art for it. Please do take a moment to commend Clouds amazing art for this piece right [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2639816). 
> 
> Lastly, to my dear reader, this is the one thing I want to tell you—I write for no profit other than this: that after reading this, you step out your door and see the world just a little bit differently, hold the things you love just a bit tightly, and breathe just a bit lightly.
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you for making it to the end of this story. 
> 
>  
> 
> Until next year,  
> Nhixxie.


End file.
